Draco Takes a Mark
by diamonddaydream
Summary: "That Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy were mad for each other was the worst kept secret at Hogwarts." Dramione retelling of HBP. When Crookshanks brings Draco to Hermione after the battle of the Department of Mysteries, she inscribes a love charm on his arm in defiance of the Dark Mark and changes the course of the war. Follows "Dancing with Draco" or read alone. HEA, complete.
1. Chapter 1

After the Yule Ball at the Triwizard Tournament, the fact that Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy were mad for each other was the worst kept secret at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It wasn't just because Draco had kissed her in front of everyone at the end of the ball. There were plenty of conspiracy theories about someone using a love charm to foster inter-house affection that night, some blaming it on Dumbledore himself. Whatever the reason and in spite of whether Draco started it or not, at least half the school had passionately snogged each other at the ball. (Ron Weasley's neck alone took days to heal from the love bites Pansy Parkinson left behind.)

After all of that was over, a person would have to have exquisite timing indeed to catch Draco and Hermione in an embrace. A careful observer might notice some bumping against one another when walking the corridors, parts of the library that would be suddenly strangely inaccessible late in the evening, and some spectacularly disarrayed hair on Hermione's side, but not much more.

No, what tipped everyone off that it wasn't all just a magical mistake at the Yule Ball was that cat of hers, that shaggy orange creature called Crookshanks. He had somehow found a way to go between Gryffindor Tower and the Slytherin Dungeon at will. No one knew how he did it, but some nights, especially before a difficult exam for the Slytherin fourth years, Crookshanks would stroll out from under a sofa or behind a curtain in the Slytherin common room and bound into Draco's lap to keep him company while he worked.

In fifth year, the cat kept coming, even months after the new headmistress started the Inquisitorial squad with Draco Malfoy as its student leader, charged with hunting down Harry Potter's new secret student group. The school population humoured Malfoy and Granger's obnoxious game of cat and mouse - all except the headmistress, who hadn't been at the Yule Ball and who knew nothing about Crookshanks.

It was extremely convincing at times, but the consensus was that their theatrical displays of enmity were played to keep Malfoy in a position where he could insulate his girl from Umbridge for as long as possible. It lasted until Umbridge's abuse of veritaserum meant Potter's secret couldn't be hidden another moment.

Yes, how could it be anything but an act when Crookshanks would still appear in the Slytherin dorms, purring and bumping his chin against Draco's knuckles as he spent cold nights revising for his OWLs by the fire?

After the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Draco and the cat were seen together in Hogwarts just one more time. Hermione had been brought back from the Ministry to the school's hospital wing badly cursed. Madam Pomfrey had poured a dozen potions down her throat to counteract it but Hermione spent the rest of the night awake, sore and sick and sad, unable to take a sleeping draught that might interact with the rest of her medicines. Everyone else from the scene was sleeping soundly under the effects of their potions when Malfoy arrived at the door to the hospital wing not long before dawn.

By then, he and Nott and Crabbe had met with Snape to hear about their fathers' arrests, and his mother had contacted him by floo, almost incoherent with grief but intent on explaining everything in her own way. She wanted to tell him, to warn him of what to expect next. He had raged and cried but hadn't slept - felt like he might never sleep again - and now he was being refused entry to the hospital wing.

Madam Pomfrey had been debriefed on the tragedy at the Department of Mysteries too. "No, Mr. Malfoy, you may not visit at this time. We are not in the business of offering up the injured for vengeance."

"I don't want any vengeance," he tried to assure her. "I just need to see - her."

Madam Pomfrey tossed her head. "You will have all of your questions answered in a few hours, along with the rest of the students. The headmaster - that is, the real headmaster, Professor Dumbledore - will be addressing the school shortly. Now, if you please, it is very late - "

She was pushing the door closed against his knee as he protested. "Madam Pomfrey, believe me, I have no ill intentions toward anyone here. I - " he stopped at a familiar feeling against his shin. "Wait!" he called, scooping up the cat. "This is Hermione Granger's cat. Look at him - he's half kneazle. If I meant to hurt her, he'd be scratching my eyes out right now. But listen to him purring instead. You hear that? Please, let me see her."

Madam Pomfrey stood considering the frantic, white-faced boy, eyes rimmed red with old tears and sleeplessness, barely sixteen, his family in ruins, clinging to a cat that was purring like a Muggle motor, pleading to see a girl he had kissed at a ball a few years ago - a girl far too good for him by just about everyone's reckoning.

Slowly, Crookshanks pivoted his head toward the woman barring the door, his golden eyes blinking languidly.

"Quickly and quietly," she said as she led them inside.

Weasley was tucked into the bed across the room from Hermione's, snoring noisily, potioned out of his mind, his arm thick with bandages. In her own bed, Hermione's eyes were closed but she lay awake and restless, wincing against her pillows.

"Hey," he said.

Her eyes cracked open. "Crookshanks!"

The cat slipped from his arms, plummeting to the bed and curling itself into a furry heap on the blankets between her feet. "Crookshanks, how did you get here?"

"He just appeared at my feet in the corridor, like he does," Draco explained.

She gasped, seeming to just have noticed who had brought the cat. "Mal - Draco."

He hoped his tone was neutral. "Hi."

"Hi," she echoed.

He looked more than exhausted, as if he'd been physically beaten. Since he'd arrived, he'd hardly spoken at all but she had heard it anyway - the similarities in tone and cadence between Draco's speech and his father's. Lucius had been wearing a mask when she'd seen him at the Ministry earlier, but his voice was unmistakable, especially to her. And the eyes - they'd been visible through the openings in the mask, clear and glittering with hate and anger, fear. It was completely different, but at the same time, not unlike the glittering of Draco's eyes when they were together, and he was irrepressibly happy to be with her.

"Where are you hurt?" he asked.

"Kind of all over, but mostly here." She waved a hand along her left side, over her ribcage.

"Who did it?"

It was a much more specific question than it seemed. What he wanted to know was whether his father had done it. "It wasn't him," she said.

He crossed to the right side of the bed, sat down, and with his quick lightness he swung his legs onto the bed, slipping both his arms around one of hers, managing to embrace her without aggravating her injuries. He nestled his chin into her shoulder, his breath on her neck, his face in her hair.

After a year and a half of being with him, however clandestinely, her body had developed a conditioned response to his. Her bloodstream flooded with comfort and well-being at his touch, even if it was just a brush against her robes in the tussle for potion ingredients at the back of the classroom. It was the same tonight. His presence was medicine, real as anything Madam Pomfrey could dispense. Hermione made way for him on the small hospital cot, letting him fill the space, tipping her face to breathe in the scent of his hair, her closed mouth resting in an almost-kiss against his crown.

"Hermione - "

"Shh, not yet."

She crossed her arm across her aching ribs to hold him tighter. If they could just lay here together in the quiet - Draco, Crookshanks and herself - she might be able to sleep in spite of the pain. But that wasn't why he'd come. He lay beside her vibrating with anxiety. For right now, her fight was over. His was just beginning.

They'd been able to hold themselves apart from everything else for so long - apart from Harry, Draco's parents, the Order and, well, the other side. But they'd finally been overtaken. Lucius Malfoy had drawn Harry out, had stood in the Department of Mysteries, masked and murderous and included her among "the others," the ones who could be killed if necessary. Draco couldn't have known it was coming, or that it would be this way, but still...

She inclined her head to look at him. He felt her shift and glanced up at the same time. It was too much and she shut her eyes, easing a tear out of each of them. His thumb was on her face, brushing the tears away, and she felt him rising against her undamaged side, moving to kiss her. There was a quaver in his lips and breath, as if he was unsure she'd still accept him but desperate for her anyway. With no hesitation, she returned his kiss with firm pressure, with the slick warm seal of an opening mouth.

_Of course, of course._

He stretched higher, deeper into her kiss, still hardly moving for fear of hurting her. He clenched his fists to keep from grabbing her and simply running away, disappearing, making their separateness from everyone else a permanent reality somewhere no one would ever find them. Not that it was possible - not without costing each of them things they couldn't bear to lose.

How was he going to tell her that they were gathering at his house, at this moment? His mother had told him to expect it. They were coming - not just awful Aunt Bella but all of them. In one more day, before school ended, he would be there with them, the reluctant, terrorized lord of the manor, just weeks past his sixteenth birthday, unable to refuse anything, doing whatever they asked in order to keep himself alive to keep his mother safe. Or at least to keep the foul, snake-faced dark lord from unmanning his father in the worst way he could, by tampering with Lucius's wife.

Hermione pulled away from him, and though it hurt her to swallow, she did anyway. "Someone said something tonight. It wasn't about us, but it was. They said, 'It's time to learn the difference between life and dreams.'"

He bowed into her shoulder, groaning before he sat up beside her on the bed, nodding miserably.

"Don't go to them," she said.

"Them?" he said. "They've got my mother, the only real family I have left now that…" He couldn't finish. "Imagine it was you. What wouldn't you do to get your parents to safety?"

The question ran through her like a shiver. "But they're not safe, are they? Bring your mother here, to Dumbledore. And your father - well, at least," she began, in the worst possible way to say anything to someone grieving a loss, "at least in Azkaban your father is safe, in his way."

He stood up, scoffing. "Thanks. But you've got no idea."

"I bloody well do," she answered, sitting up painfully in her bed. "I was under the same roof as you-know-who tonight. In the line of fire of - of people doing his work. And even unconscious and injured, I escaped them. Look at them, they can't win. We're stronger."

Draco shook his head. "Are you? Not everyone made it out of the Ministry. We Blacks have suffered a death in the family tonight, as I'm sure you haven't forgotten. No, and they've got nothing to lose now. From now on, they'll be brazen. It'll be carnage all around. This was just the beginning of a wave of casualties."

"Listen to me Draco, have some faith in Dumbledore, and in Harry."

It was the least persuasive thing she could have possibly said. He was shaking his head again. "All that means is that they'll be next. And there's nothing you, Hermione Granger, can do about it. Get out of the road. Keep your parents out of it. Take them away. Lay low for a few years."

"You know I can't do that."

"Hermione - "

"If you're so worried about me, then help me."

He pulled at his hair. "Don't make me choose between my parents and you. If I don't choose my parents, they'll die. You - you've got people to protect you. My parents have no one. Just me."

She rose to kneeling on her bed. Crookshanks flexed his ears in opposite directions. "You can't stand up to Voldemort by yourself."

"No," he agreed. "My father - he was powerful, a perfect servant, and not even he - no, the best we can do is survive, and wait. It's all anyone can do."

"Hope, Draco," she said, her voice still soft in the sleeping hospital ward, but high, near tears. "I know it's hard for you to imagine tonight. But - please hope."

He stood in front of where she still knelt on the bed, leaned his forehead against hers. He spoke through gritted teeth. "I'll go home, pass a dark and horrifying summer, and when you see me again - who knows what they'll have done to me, what I'll have done by then. But whatever happens, remember that I…" He stopped, grimacing as if in pain, holding his breath. "No, this is not how I wanted to say this to you."

He let out his breath, moving as if to take a step back, to leave, when she grabbed the front of his jumper with both of her hands, holding their faces together. "What, Draco? Say what to me?"

He strained against her hold, looking away. "No, you can't hear it for the first time like this."

"Draco, don't go." Her ribs burned and she was sinking back to sit, still gripping his jumper, but gathering it up, pulling it over his head.

With his head caught inside his jumper, he stammered unintelligibly before she pulled it clear. She dropped it on the bed, next to Crookshanks who stretched and kneaded it with his claws. Draco sat blinking at the jumper she'd taken off him, bewildered, the high tragedy of his tone slipping. "Granger," he gasped, looking over his shoulder at sleeping Weasley. "It's definitely not the best moment for us to do this for the first time either."

"I am not seducing you," she smirked.

"Aren't you? Then stop taking my clothes off," he argued as she pressed on with unbuttoning the cuff of his shirt.

She pushed his sleeve to his elbow, baring his long white arm. "This is where your father has the Dark Mark, isn't it?"

There was no point denying it now. "Yes. It's black and about the size of a witch's hand."

"Brilliant," she said. "Hand me my wand. It's on the table there."

He raised his eyebrows but passed her the wand. She took it, holding it not by the handle, but near the tip, as if it was a quill. "Keep still," she said.

A cool blue line of light flickered from the end of her wand, shrinking and sharpening into something like a small stylus. It looked energetic enough that he should have recoiled from it, but he didn't, trusting instead, his arm motionless as she lowered the stylus toward the tender flesh of his inner arm.

"As you know, you are mine," she said. "I have a prior claim on you. If those people try to mark you - "

"When they try - "

"Whatever happens, they will find it's not as easy as they might have expected. You are not friendless, Draco Malfoy. You are - " she caught herself and stopped, smoothing the skin under her wand, blowing on it like dark embers, watching for it to flare with heat and light. "You have people who care for you, who protect you, who defy what hurts you."

He kissed the top of her head as she bent over his arm. "I appreciate the righteous ranting but do stop and tell me what it is you're trying to do, exactly."

"I'm inscribing a spell on your arm. It's both a protection and a message. Whoever comes after will have to remove it before they can leave their own mark."

He smirked. "You're defacing me? With a message? Make it filthy then."

She laughed, relieved to hear him sounding more like himself. "I will not."

From her office, Madam Pomfrey jumped at the sound of laughter. She would never lose the awe she felt at the resilience the students had in their tragedies, always ending up laughing in her hospital somehow. None of them ever grew tired of kissing or laughing.

On the bed, Draco sat over Hermione as she worked, batting at her hair. "Can't we move all this out of the way? I want to see what you're writing."

"You'll see when I'm done. Stop moving or it'll be wobbly and illegible."

"Does that matter if it's mostly invisible?"

"Of course it matters." She sat back. "There."

He pulled his arm toward his face, squinting.

"Breathe on it," she said. "It's like a trick some of the girls use to leave love notes on glass."

He opened his mouth and breathed a hot cloud onto his forearm. An image flamed to light. It was the size and the exact shape of a woman's hand, her hand. In the centre of it was a heart - not a Valentine's heart like the ones festooned over everything at Madam Puddifoot's - but an anatomical heart. And written across the heart was a word: hope.

"The H is extra large, because it stands for 'Hermione,'" she said.

Speechless, he traced the H with his fingertip.

"One more thing to set it properly," she said, taking his arm in her hand again. "Crookshanks, if you please?" She took the cat's front paw in her hand, pressing on the pads to bare his claws. Using a small, yellow talon, she scratched the skin at the centre of Draco's mark until a single drop of blood formed, not even big enough to bead and roll away. The outline of the mark flashed once before receding into his skin.

"Thank you, Crookshanks," she told the cat as he curled his paws underneath his body again. "And last of all..." She bent and kissed the tiny wound. Her strength left her before she could sit back up again, and she stayed bowed against his skin, her lips pressed to the mark she'd left, something mounting inside her, around her cursed heart, fighting, but already so tired.

His free hand found her chin, and he tipped her face to look at him, raising her up. "I can say it now."

"I think you'd better."

"Hermione Granger, I love you."

Saying no more, she kissed him, deeply and breathlessly, and he held her until she could no longer keep from squirming in pain from the effort of being injured and upright for so long.

"Maybe you'll be able to sleep now," he said as he eased her onto her back. She caught his arm as he straightened up, breathing on it to see her mark again.

"You are loved," she told him in a hoarse voice. "Seeing this won't stop them, but it will let them know what will stop them in the end." She took him by his tie, reeling him in, and whispering something almost unbearably sweet into his ear.

The sun was rising now, golden light streaming through the leaded windows, glinting off Crookshanks's coat. It caught Draco's eye, and he considered gathering up the cat and taking him away, leaving Hermione to rest uncrowded. Crookshanks seemed to know and lifted his head, glaring a warning that he would not be moved.

Draco vanished from Hogwarts before Hermione and Ron were released from the hospital wing. By the time they had recovered, the term had ended. Hermione spent a token few weeks with her parents before she was sent for to stay with Ron and Harry at the Burrow, bringing Crookshanks with her.

If the cat ever found his way from there to Malfoy manor, neither he nor Draco ever told.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author Note: Good response to this so I've added a chapter. Let me know if you want more.**

It was only the evening of the first day of classes in her sixth year, but Hermione was already in the library, getting started on ancient runes, the closest thing there was to a course on literature at Hogwarts. The book she needed was shelved high over her head, and as she reached for it, a long, lean arm curved around her waist from behind, while a white hand moved over hers and past it, sliding the book free for her.

There was a voice hot in her ear. "What was Slughorn saying in class today, over those fussy potions? Something about not underestimating the power of obsessive love?"

She spun around to face Draco Malfoy, this close to her for the first time since she'd shared a tortured goodbye with him in the hospital wing before summer holidays.

"You. You have been behaving very badly," she began immediately, bending her arms at the elbows and cramming them between them, like a wedge. She was working to be stern, even angry, but it was too much of a relief to be touching him again after weeks of tense separation. She was already warm and melting, and he knew it.

He lowered his face toward hers. "Bad. And so you've been punishing me, avoiding me," he said, his hands moving up and down her back, rolling the curves of her shoulders against his palms. "We arrived yesterday and you still haven't come to find me. Neither has that great orange beast."

"You mean Ron?" she chirped.

"No, not Weasley," he said, outraged as she laughed at him, and loud enough for someone two aisles over to shush him. He whispered into her face. "Where's our cat been off sulking?"

She tossed her head. "Crookshanks isn't like a human. His love isn't stupidly obsessive. It's purposeful. He's only good to you when you're good."

Draco frowned. "Granger, I've been as good as I can be, under the circumstances. Did you forget already? When I saw you at Madam Malkin's the first thing I did was ask about your black eye." He leaned in to kiss her fully healed eyelid, slowly, lingering on it, cutting off her view of anything else but him.

She pulled back. "You said you wanted to send flowers to whoever gave it to me."

He smirked. "Did you see flowers in your mind when I said it though? At the time, it was the best way for me to conjure any kind of get-well tribute for you, with my mother standing at my elbow and all." He kissed her other eyelid. "Think back. At the start of every school year, when I run into you lot, my first comment is often directed right at you."

She huffed as he buried his face in her hair, telling him, "In the future, freezing disdain will do just as well as a vulgar insult for a greeting."

He pulled away, smoothing her hair with one hand. "Yes, well don't think I don't know you went into Borgin and Burkes after I left, telling them I was your boyfriend and that you wanted to buy me a gift."

She batted at his chest. "I did not say that."

"Close enough."

"Well, I had to do something to call Harry off. He's obsessed with you too, you know. He's sure you've taken the Dark Mark and that you're a threat to all of us this year."

Draco twitched, his left arm drifting away from where it rested against her.

"And what happened between the two of you alone in the train compartment at Hogsmeade Station yesterday," she said, the trace of a smile that had been playing about her face disappearing completely, "it was ghastly. The sight of either of you covered in blood at the hands of the other - it's something I never want to see again."

He let go of her, stepping backward, away. She didn't let him retreat, snatching both of his hands in hers. "So far, everyone agrees Harry is overreacting," she said. "Please, Draco. Don't prove them wrong."

He pried his hands away a second time. "Did Potter send you here to see if you could get me to show you my arm? To confirm or refute his theory? Are you on another fake-girlfriend fact-finding mission for him, like you were in Knockturn Alley?"

She sighed. "Draco, it was you who found me here tonight. And I am happy you did." She crossed her arms behind his neck. "I missed you terribly. I worried constantly. Seeing you here so close to me, still so much like yourself after all you must have been through this summer - it's like a miracle."

Rising to her toes, she kissed him, softly and sweetly. His arms closed around her torso as he responded, his mouth growing hungrier, more forceful as the seconds rushed by, the edge of his teeth against her lip, tantalizing but too sharp and dangerous, especially for the library. She pulled away, breath ragged.

He startled, remembering. "Your injuries, are they alright now? Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head. "No, it's fine, so fine. Hold me as tightly as you need to."

He did, grinning into the crown of her head. "Still good."

"Not quite," she said, shoving against his chest.

He groaned. "For the love of Boggarts, Granger, what now?"

She folded her arms between them again. "Harry saw everything when he was hiding in the luggage rack in your compartment, Malfoy - EVERYTHING."

He looked up at the ceiling, replaying the scene from the train in his mind. "Obviously. What are you trying to say?"

She batted her eyes and spoke in a high wheedling voice, "Oh Draco, your hair is so silky and pretty, lay back and rest your head on my thighs and let me touch it all over."

"You're on about Parkinson?"

"Yes, Pansy Parkinson, the girl who fondled you all the way from London yesterday."

Draco gathered Hermione higher and tighter against himself. "Wait, wait," he said. "I'm trying to remember exactly how you explained to me that it was for the best if we look like we're interested in other people. It was when you let Viktor Krum fish you out of the bottom of the lake as his treasure during the Triwizard tournament while the press snapped photos and rhapsodized your sweet young romance. How did that go again? We're in the library right now. You want to look it up? It's carefully preserved in the newspaper archive section. Pictures of Krum with the water beading on his muscles, carrying you like a bride, soaking wet and only half dressed, rising out of the lake together to everyone's cheers?"

She struggled weakly against him. "That event was not at all romantic. Bride indeed. Fleur's hostage was her sister and it was Ron that Harry rescued."

"You know, I've always wondered about Potter and Weasley. What is going on with them? How else could anyone explain the way neither of them fancies you?"

She let out a laugh much too loudly. "Who says neither of them fancies me? As a matter of fact - "

"Right, stop," he said. "The thing is, when we're outside school, I'm being watched. I have to be who they want me to be in all the small ways, like cuddling with their pure-blood girls, so they won't be so quick to harass me about all the big ways I disappoint them."

Her expression had turned sad, and not because of Pansy Parkinson. Hermione had always been able to connect to Draco so perfectly in and so many ways that the gaping chasm between them was something they could fool themselves into thinking they could ignore, just a little longer. But it was now wider than ever, and more dangerous. What would she find if she were to look at his arm? It was an impossible topic to raise. She crept only around the edge of the chasm.

"So they're really at your house?"

"Yes."

"Is it scary?"

He paused, swallowing hard. "Yes."

"Do you," she began, watching him wince, ready to recoil from her if she pressed too hard. She kept her question general, playful, silly as she could make it. "Do you feel any more evil than you used to?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. When I broke Potter's nose on the train, what I was feeling more than anything was sickening, crazy love for my father."

His father who had given the Death Eaters under his command permission to kill her if she got in their way. It was another item on the growing list of things they could not talk about.

Draco knew it as well, and was re-routing the conversation. "And," he said in a brighter voice, "as I stand here I am sorely tempted to flip your skirt up and - well - but that may not be something I can blame on a Dark Lord."

"No, that's just my Malfoy," she said. "And don't you dare."

* * *

Ron Weasley came stomping into the library, no bag, no books, just an old parchment in his hands, reading it like a map, searching for something.

"You can't get back there right now." Pansy Parkinson spoke from where she sat at a nearby table, calling him back as he was about to step behind a tall, densely packed bookcase.

He glanced at her, looking away as his face flushed ever so slightly red. Bloody Parkinson with all the dark lipstick. Ron ignored her and walked around the bookcase just to find himself turned around and emerging exactly where he'd started.

He swore. "How do they do that?"

"It's a passageway spell," Parkinson explained. "You find them in large old houses. like Malfoy Manor. It seals off entrances and exits but invisibly. There's a whole section of the Malfoy's private library on old magical architecture. And it looks like Draco has read it very carefully."

Ron tried getting to the other side of the bookcase again. It was no good. He fell into the chair beside Pansy instead. "Are you waiting for them? Trying to catch them?" he asked her.

She raised her dark eyebrows. "You think after all this time we could finally shame them into leaving each other alone just by calling them out again?"

Ron let out his breath. "Suppose not. But - I mean - honestly, they can't keep this up. His father tried to kill us, for stars' sake. This has got to be the year it ends."

Pansy tapped the plume of her quill against her lower lip. "Well I, for one, will not sit here waiting for Hermione Granger's leavings. Draco will come to me but it has got to be in spite of Miss Perfect, or I'll have no self-respect at all."

Ron shook his head, dumbfounded that any girl could want Draco Malfoy, especially ones as brilliant as Hermione or as fit as Parkinson. It was too bad about Parkinson's personality, and her background, and her attitude - everything but her looks, really. "Just move on," he offered.

Pansy scoffed. "I could tell you the same."

He slumped against the tabletop. "Impossible. She's had me locked up since second year. Takes me for granted though, that's what she does."

"Yes, exactly," Pansy said. "On the train yesterday, I thought I had reason to hope but it turns out it was all just a show to keep the adults happy."

Harry had told him about that, and it almost made him sorry for her. "We've got to find new ways to flaunt our value. Because, we don't need this, Parkinson. I'm a bloody quidditch keeper. And you - " He waved a hand at her figure. "I'm just saying, loads of people would be happy to have us."

"Weasley," she groaned. "The answer is obvious, isn't it?"

"What? More lipstick?"

She was tucking her unopened new school books back into her bag. "Something like that." She leaned closer to him, talking low. "Look, Weasley. There are few people at school Draco would hate to see me with more than you."

"Thanks."

"And you and I - it's not like we don't have a bit of a history, a certain compatibility, sickening as it may be."

"For me and all, Parkinson."

"Shut up. I don't need you to talk. I need you for an experiment." She withdrew a tube of lipstick from the same pocket where she kept her wand. "No one else at school wears this shade. If you're seen with it on you, everyone will be gossiping about us having our own secret fling. And if it gets back to them," she nodded at the impenetrable bookcase, "they might start to see us a bit differently."

He gaped at her. "So you're saying, you'd take that - " He reached for the lipstick, but then yanked his hands away. "Take that and draw - on me."

"No, you daft prat. I would have to actually peck you with my lips. But you would live through it. I promise." She cocked her head. "What do you say? Should I find some other insufferable Gryffindor git to help me? Fine. I'll do that. Sorry to have bothered you."

"Wait," he said, snagging her arm as she rose to leave. "Promise not to bite me and we've got a deal."

"Brilliant," she said.

He watched her as she re-applied her dark plum lipstick. He hadn't noticed that he'd licked his own lips until she smirked and asked, "Want some? Can't say it's your colour, Ginger, but you're welcome to it."

"Nah, I'm good."

"Right," she said, capping the lipstick. "No sudden movements."

"Wha?"

She sprung forward and smacked a quick kiss on the side of his neck, over his carotid artery, marking him with her lipstick, dark against his white flesh. She frowned as she sat back to inspect it. "A bit smeared, but I'm not doing it again."

Ron made a nonverbal sound of assent, not sure if saying thanks would be at all appropriate.

"No, don't wipe it off, Weasley," she scolded as his fingers rose toward the mark she'd left. "That's the whole point. All you need to do now is let everyone see it. We'll build from there."

* * *

Later, Draco lay in bed awake in the Slytherin dungeons. No cat. He had hoped going back to school would make it easier to sleep. But now that he was here, the clock was ticking on his impossible task - the one upon which the survival of his entire branch of the Malfoy family depended.

He had hoped seeing Hermione again would make everything easier, less bleak and doomed. During the time when they were actually together, it did. But somehow, their time apart was more difficult now, knowing she was here, in danger, but her not knowing it, even sticking up for him to Potter. Did Potter have good instincts, some kind of gift of divination, or was he just paranoid enough to be right once in awhile, like a stopped clock? In bed, Draco curled his body in on itself, tight like a spring.

In the darkness of his room under the lake, Draco couldn't see the Dark Mark, but he knew it was there, on his left arm, in front of his face. When he opened his eyes and the darkness started to move and flicker, like pixels on a Muggle screen, he could almost believe he saw the original mark still in place, the one Hermione had inscribed on his left arm - the hand, heart, and hope. While he had it, her mark had glowed in the dark when he breathed on it, pulsing with his heartbeat as he fell asleep every night.

It hadn't last long. He hadn't been back at the manor for two full weeks before Aunt Bella dragged him into the drawing room one night, its walls ringed with sweaty masked Death Eaters, the Dark Lord standing before the highest fire Draco had ever seen on that marble hearth. Wormtail had sat hunched behind him, arranging iron pokers in the flames.

"Ah, Master Draco," the Dark Lord had crooned. "Come, we have assembled to honor you."

Draco's mother had been there too, sitting in an armchair, her face red with firelight, Bellatrix's fingers clamped around her shoulders. "Your arm, Draco," she had said.

He had removed his jacket, his cuff link.

"All of it," said the Dark Lord. "We are an intimate society. Let us look on you."

Draco had unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall in a heap with the rest of his clothing. He stood in just his trousers and shoes in the hot drawing room, his skin clammy with cold sweat, his eyes closed as the reptile-cool hands moved across his shoulders and down the length of his left arm. Hermione's magic snapped against the corpse-like fingertips.

"What is this?" the Dark Lord had grinned. "Madam Malfoy, your young son has a love token inscribed on his arm. How charming."

Narcissa had startled. "Has he? Draco, you never said so. That would be the Parkinson girl. Wouldn't it, darling?"

The Dark Lord had tutted her. "Now, Madam Malfoy, Master Draco's love affairs demand privacy. He is, after all, not a boy any longer." He had pushed the sleeves of his robe above his elbows. A cloud of blue sparks flared as he passed his hand over Hermione's mark. "Formidable magic for a young witch. I daresay the process of inscription must have been painful."

"Not at all, my lord." It was the first and only thing Draco would say that night.

"Chivalrous of you to say, Draco," the Dark Lord had grinned. "Ah, it says, 'Hope.' Yes, my son, but with our return, you have no need to merely hope. You may tell your witch that very thing, when you see her again. And do beg her pardon on my behalf, for spoiling her spell."

With that, he had swirled the tip of his wand over Hermione's mark. It had flashed to life, its usual blue glow burning white, sparking and snapping between the wand and Draco's flesh. The white mass had grown denser, rounding at the edges, buzzing like a swarm of bees, rippling and bending.

The Dark Lord's smirk had tightened into a hard line, his mouth a slit, like the ones in his nose. He had snarled, jerking the end of his wand hard, throwing the white hot swarm toward the fire. It had come free of Draco's arm but rather than being consumed in the fire, it had flown into hundreds of tiny lights, singing as they dispersed through the gloom of the drawing room. From somewhere within their chords, Draco had thought he heard Hermione's voice, laughing.

Bellatrix had shrieked, swatting at the lights, shaking them out of her hair. Narcissa had covered her face with her hands, bending into her own lap, shaking with tears. The lights had sparked and flamed against the masks of the other Death Eaters, standing unmoved around the room like empty suits of armour. Draco could not have hidden his smile.

"Wormtail," the Dark Lord had hissed, his hand outstretched. "The brands."


	3. Chapter 3

For the first time ever, Potter's celebrity was not annoying for Draco Malfoy. Rather, it was exactly what he needed. It was a Saturday in mid-September, the day of the Gryffindor quidditch tryouts, and everyone was there. The castle itself was nearly empty, making this day the perfect time to move the broken vanishing cabinet on the first floor up to the urgent privacy of the seventh floor.

Draco found the cabinet exactly where a wet and deranged Graham Montague had told him it would be. It was indeed identical to the one in Borgin and Burkes shop. It was draped in a huge sheet of dusty maroon velvet, but beneath it was dark, ornately carved wood and metalwork. He wound the cabinet in a disillusionment charm and levitated it all the way upstairs by slow degrees, staircase by staircase, corridor by corridor, as the afternoon of Chosen One quidditch hoopla played out on the fields below the school.

On the seventh floor, he paced three times in front of the empty wall opposite the troll ballet tapestry, repeating how badly he needed a place to hide and work without being discovered. There it was, its door grinding out of the stonework - the Room of Hidden Things, exactly what he required.

The Dark Lord had seemed almost angry when Draco first came up with this plan. The point of the original impossible task of assassinating Dumbledore was, after all, for it to be impossible. The Dark Lord had been looking for a death sentence for Draco and his parents when he gave him the task, but he was willing to entertain a workable plan to murder Dumbledore instead. Whatever happened in the end, the Dark Lord would win something.

Draco shuddered. Even thinking about it was dangerous - dangerous when he thought about doing it, more dangerous when he thought about sabotaging himself and not doing it. In the Room of Hidden Things, he closed his eyes and practiced the occulmency maneuvres the awful people at his house had taught him, shifting and stirring the currents of his mind until his head was a raging whirlpool where no single thought could be recognized.

"And remember, wee Draco," Aunt Bella had said, "occulmency begins on your mouth. Smile!"

Bellatrix ruined everything. Draco could not smile at all as he leaned into the window of the upper room, rubbing the dust from the pane, looking down into the quidditch pitch where things seemed to be finally breaking up. The crowd was dispersing but the new Gryffindor team was staying behind to run a few plays.

Hermione would be coming back to the castle, alone. Hermione, who was turning seventeen years old today while her best friends were caught up in their game because they were the absolute worst, he thought. He brushed the dust from his black jacket, and slipped between the jumbled heaps of hidden things to go find her.

"They did not forget my birthday," she defended her friends as she walked four steps ahead of Draco toward the shore of the lake, as if they weren't together. "The day just sneaked up on them this year, since the Gryffindor tryouts were right away and Ron - well, he needed some emergency pre-tryout practice or we'd've be in for an awfully awkward year."

Draco rolled his eyes, his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't try to hold her hand so close to the rest of the students out strolling on a fine autumn afternoon - not that anyone who could hear them would have mistaken them for doing anything but arguing. "Emergency practice with the captain himself? Favouritsm: the eternal key to Gryffindor success."

"Stop it," she said, pushing the long, sweeping tendrils of a golden willow bush aside, stepping into a hidden clearing between the limbs and leaves, a space large enough for two. "I told the boys they didn't need to coddle me today. It's not like they won't assume that I'd just as soon be - well…"

He had stepped beneath the willow's drooping canopy with her. As she'd spoken, she'd turned and burrowed inside his jacket, her arms closing around him between the layers of his clothes, her face against his chest.

"Just as soon be doing what?" The lowest notes of his voice rumbling against her face. "Corrupting a sixteen year old boy?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you not want to be corrupted? Very well then."

"Stay right here," he said, holding her closer, a smirk in his voice. "No matter what either of us wants, Potter will reckon you're here on an important reconnaissance mission for him. He'll be hounding you for reports of nefarious behaviour of mine once you get back."

She lifted her chin. "I'll simply tell him what I always do: that all of your behaviours are nefarious."

"That's my girl."

"At least I'll be able to stop talking about quidditch tryouts - with Ron and Harry, that is. When is Slytherin having theirs, anyway?"

He narrowed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers. "You and quidditch players. What is the fascination? You don't care at all about the actual game. Couldn't tell a bludger from a quaffle, could you?"

She shoved him with two fingers against his shoulder. "There is no fascination. I am simply trying to be supportive of your interests."

He stood up straight. "Then forget about quidditch. I'm not interested in it."

"How can you not be interested, all of a sudden?"

He shrugged. "Unfortunately, I grew up a lot this summer. Quidditch is a game for children and people who wish they were. Not for me."

"But," she stammered. "You can't just drop it. The first time I took any real notice of you was on a quidditch pitch. That first year flying lesson, when Neville got hurt and carried off by the teacher, and we were left out there forbidden to fly but you were a complete brat and did it anyway. And no one could say you weren't good at it. That's why the smell of grass, it - "

He interrupted her, scoffing. "Yeah, but you could say that my father bribed my way onto the team the very next year."

She groaned, rising to kiss his cheek. "I am sorry." She turned to kiss his other cheek. "Sorry." She kissed his chin. "How many times do I have to apologize? And you had your vulgar revenge in that moment - your scary little scowl and calling me mudblood for the first time. It's not like you took it lying down."

"Lying down?" He grabbed at her, dropping to the ground, rolling on top of her in the grass beneath the bending willow branches. Her eyes closed against the dizziness of their motion, her laugh devoured in his kiss. He took her mouth and her breath and she clung to him, her palms pressed to either side of his face. Their kisses in the library were stolen and scandalous but held by reins of propriety and decorum. The ones away from the castle, in private like this, were dangerous for other reasons. She felt them low in body, already tipping her spine into an arch beneath him as he crushed his chest against hers. In her ever-thinking mind, she was scrambling to catch herself, bringing her attention back up, to their faces. Beneath her hands, his cheeks were rough. They didn't stay smooth for days and days, the way they used to. The realization felt something like loneliness.

He pulled away, his torso still pinning hers to the ground as she caught her breath. "No quidditch. Here in our sixth year, I only have room in my schedule for one stress relieving pastime."

"You mean…"

"You, Granger. Of course I mean you." With one hand, he propped himself up. With the other, he took her hand, covering it where she still held it pressed to his cheek.

"I know exactly the kind of time your prefect duties and your school workload demand this year, Malfoy. They're the same as mine only you're not taking ancient runes. Why do you think you're going to have so little time?"

He forced a grin. "Because I'm not as smart as you and it will take me longer to learn it all."

"Rubbish."

He was sitting up. "Hermione, don't - "

"All I'm saying," she said over him, pushing herself upright on the grass, "is that - whatever else is demanding your time, you can talk to me about it. I can help, or I can get help - "

"Stop, please. You don't get it - "

"But I want to - "

"I don't want you to. So just leave it and take your birthday present." He took a silky purple pouch from his pocket and crammed it into her hand.

She gasped. "You got me a present? You didn't last year."

"Yes, and I've had all year to repent of that. Open it."

Inside the pouch was a piece of deep orange amber, buffed to a gem-like sheen and carved into the shape of a cat. It was set in silver and hanging from a fine silver chain.

He smirked as she examined it, holding it up so the afternoon light set it glowing. "You like it." It was not a question.

"I love it. Thank you." He hugged him around his neck. "But I'm not sure if it will work to smooth things over between you and Crookshanks. He still hasn't visited you?"

"Not even once." He said as he fastened the chain beneath her hair, his playful tone gone. Draco was genuinely grieved about the loss of his stake in the cat.

She scooted across the grass, shifting herself into his lap. "Figure out why, and fix it. Please, Draco. It's the only way he'll come back to you."

There was no answer he could make. He couldn't even lift his head to look at her eye to eye. She reached for him anyway, ducking to kiss him, her fingers in his hair, her lips working to part his. He didn't believe he deserved it, but he didn't resist.

* * *

"So, any repercussions?" It was Pansy Parkinson, appearing outside the boys' locker room once quidditch was finally over for the day. Ron startled at the sight of her, shaking his wet hair, flicking droplets on her face. She yelled out as she wiped the water away.

"What, you mean did anyone mention that purple smear you left on my neck?" he said.

She shushed him. "Yeah. No one's said anything to me about it yet. How about you?"

He scoffed. "Well, I had to owl my mum about how to get the stain out of my collar and she bawled me out for being so careless with my grape juice. Other than that - nothing."

Pansy was noticeably crestfallen. "I put my mouth on you for nothing?"

"Looks like it."

She stamped her foot. "It's your hair, Weasley. It's too long. You could have the Dark Mark on your neck and no one would be able to tell through that mess."

He stopped walking and faced her, reaching for her left arm and tugging the cuff of her jumper up to her elbow. Her arm was unmarked but she snatched it away anyway.

"Just had to check," he said.

She slapped at his arm as he started away again. "You need to cut your hair, Weasley."

"I will not," he said. "Just try it again somewhere more obvious, less creepy - normal. You know, like on my face."

Pansy turned in a circle, grimacing.

Ron sighed. "Or we can just leave it and wait for a war to start and break them up nice and natural like."

"Oh, alright," she said. "We'll do the face. We'll do it now, while you're still clean and I can stand the smell of you."

She re-applied her lipstick as he wiped away more of the water droplets trickling from his hair. She tucked her lipstick back into her sleeve, clearing her throat and stepping close to him. He bent toward her, offering his white, freckled cheek. She took a deep breath and kissed it, hard and fast.

"There," she was saying, but as she moved away, he clamped one arm around her waist, holding her in place.

"Don't act like you can't stomach the smell of me," he said. "You said so yourself, Parkinson, the last time, in the library. We have a certain compatibility."

"Hands off me, Weasley," she said, wrenching herself free.

He held up both of his hands, stepping backward. "You can have all the space you want," he said, "and you can insult me all you like too. But you can't bite me, and you can't lie to me."

Pansy crossed her arms, tipped her chin forward, and snarled at him with her small white teeth.

* * *

It was just before curfew on Saturday night and Draco was supposed to be patrolling with the rest of the Slytherin prefects. Instead, he was standing in the Room of Hidden Things, in front of the vanishing cabinet draped in its long red velvet cover. That morning, Borgins's owl had arrived with the first phase of instructions for repairing it. He would start tomorrow.

He was still standing, frozen, when something moved in his peripheral vision, like a snitch for him to catch. He spun toward it, barely able to see a flash of something hairy and rusty orange disappearing behind a stack of broken chairs.

"Crookshanks?"

He was on his knees, crawling between the broken and abandoned goods of centuries of Hogwarts mishaps, struggling to chase after what he'd seen without chasing it away.

"Crookshanks, come back here," he whispered to the room.

Nothing answered - no sound of objects pushed off tables, no raspy meowing, certainly not a purr. He pushed himself off his knees and sat down on the floor that hadn't been cleaned for generations. At moments like this, he'd always been able to cry. But not even that would come to him today. He sat long enough and still enough that a tiny creature darted out in front of him. It wasn't magical, just a red squirrel like the ones who lived in the shrubbery in the courtyard outside. Whether it came to the room by accident or as the fix to someone's fit of bad judgment, Draco didn't know.

He waved his wand at the window. "Alohomora."

The squirrel leapt toward the rush of fresh air through the open window, and scuttled down the rough face of the stone building on it's tiny claws, free.


	4. Chapter 4

Late in the afternoon after quidditch tryouts, Harry was in the Gryffindor common room, just opening up the Marauder's Map to catch up with watching Malfoy's marker after spending the day away from it, when Ron came back from the showers.

Harry glanced up at him. "Ron, wipe your face. You've got something on it."

He puffed up his chest, asking in his loudest indoor voice, "Have I? What's it look like?"

Harry shrugged. "I dunno. Splotchy, like maybe you fell asleep on the purple half of a puking pastille and melted it onto your face."

Ron tapped his jaw near the splotch, as if he was thinking carefully. "Odd. I haven't been near a puking pastille since the twins moved into town. Look harder, mate. Shape doesn't look familiar, does it?"

Harry left off unfolding the map. "Well, splotchy isn't exactly unfamiliar on you, you being a ginger and all."

Ron punched his arm. "Thanks."

"Go look for yourself," Harry told him. "Whatever you do, wash it off, yeah? You look like a sticky five-year-old."

Ron ducked into the bathroom. His hair had dried in a right mess but before it had, the water dripping from it had kept running down the sides of his face and jaw, streaking through Pansy's lipstick, causing the mark, which had started as a perfectly shaped, pretty pair of lips, to morph into the mess Harry had just described.

Ron swore as he wet his fingers to scrub the rest of the mark away. She was going to kill him when he told her they'd have to do it again. But at least they'd have to do it again. And maybe this time he could convince her to do it more softly, maybe even a bit sensuously, giving the pigment a chance to warm up and cling to him properly instead of just stamping him like a train conductor. Honestly, Fred and George must have something in the shop that could print lip marks all over him better than Pansy had managed to thus far.

Well, except for the one time, with the love-charmed inter-house dancing at the Yule Ball. She'd marked him up so well during that number he had to spend the rest of Christmas holidays wearing mufflers indoors. He stood frozen over the bathroom sink, remembering that dance too long and too well, until he had to splash his whole face with cold water.

Out in the common room, Hermione had just got back from - somewhere. Harry had stopped her to pull grass and a few thin, yellow leaves out of her hair before her roommates spotted any of it.

Ron scowled at them as he came back into the room. Bloody Malfoy in the golden willow again. "Oh sure, you notice something like that on her right away," he bawled at Harry.

Hermione frowned at him. "What're you on about, Ronald?"

"Nothing," Harry hurried to answer. "What he meant to say was 'happy birthday.'"

Ron's eyes bugged in horror at himself for not remembering to mention it yet. "Right. Yeah, seventeen." He whistled. "Wow, proper adult."

She scoffed. "Try telling my parents that."

"What?"

"Eighteen is the age of majority in Muggle Britain," Harry explained.

"No way."

Harry jumped, as if he'd just come up with something brilliant. "Hey Hermione, if you're an adult witch now, then wouldn't it be indecent if you were to be - um - involved - with a minor - like, um - romantically?"

Hermione crossed her arms. "Nope. Not always, such as in cases where the adult and the minor are extremely close in age. Trust me. I have researched the question thoroughly."

Ron clapped Harry on the back. "Nice try."

She was taking her leave of them, heading up to the girl's dormitory, the way she always did when the subject of Malfoy was raised, however obliquely.

"Don't fret too much. I'm doing my best to break it all up," Ron said.

Harry raised both of his eyebrows. "How's that?"

Ron shrugged. "You'll be able to tell once it actually starts to work."

"Well, don't try too hard. It's sickening and everything, but it is a kind of insurance. I mean, Malfoy's not about to get very far with Death Eater schemes if he's spending his afternoons rolling around in the grass with Hermione, is he?"

Ron tore the map out of Harry's hands and boxed each of his ears with it. "Shut up, will you."

The sun was slanting low, about to set when Hermione reached her room. Crookshanks was stretching on her bed, and she lay down beside him to rub her face in his coat while he purred a greeting. She reached into her collar to find her birthday present.

"Look at our gift, Crookshanks," she said, holding her amber pendant in the light. "Look, it's so pretty. That's because it's you. Crookshanks - look, over here, no, open your eyes - look at it. Oh, you wicked old thing."

* * *

It was early Sunday morning, the sky dull grey, no movement from the students at all, just Filch leading a visitor to the dungeon office still occupied but Professor Snape. The visitor was someone with every right to be inside the castle, a parent, an elegant woman dressed in lavish brocade robes with a hat and veil pinned to her gleaming blond hair.

"Severus," she greeted him. "I've come alone."

"Managed to escape your sister is more like it. Come in, Narcissa." He flung open the door to admit her. "What - is it? Surely you don't dare to ask any more of me. Already, I have held back - nothing."

She cleared her throat. "To be sure. However, what I intend to say - it is in our best interests that you hear it, and that you hear it within the safety and privacy of these walls. It pertains to all three of us."

"Very well. Proceed."

She took the seat in front of his desk. "I fear that the Dark Lord," she began. "He grows impatient with Draco's progress."

"Are you quite sure?" Snape asked. "Death Eaters are made, not born and your boy has borne his Mark for only - "

"For nearly two months, yes it's still early."

"And the Dark Lord knows this, of course. Calm your nerves, Narcissa. And do not accuse yourself. Trust in the Dark Lord."

"Excuse me, Severus, it's not like that," she said. "The emotional connection the Dark Lord enjoys with all those who bear his Mark - he has warned me that when he reaches out to Draco, what he sense leaves him disturbed. Draco's thoughts and feelings - they are heavily veiled, and what he does reveal is too light and boyish, too fresh for someone who has taken on such a serious role. And that," she stopped and forced a cough, "that lightness should be giving way to more adult ambitions by now."

Snape pinched his hair into place. "Do not forget that the boy is a gifted natural occulmens. Unforeseen, but not unheard of in one so - young. I have tested him and I cannot always read him myself." Snape glared at Narcissa with the resentment of someone excluded from a secret that the person he is talking with clearly knows. "Draco must be protecting - much."

Narcissa's eyes were welling with tears but she met Snape's glare with one of her own, offering him nothing.

Snape sat back in his chair. "I will counsel Draco to let down his guard and open his mind when the Dark Lord approaches him."

"Wait," Narcissa said. "Not yet. I don't want the Dark Lord to see him clearly until we've resolved a rather troubling situation."

She told Snape about the love token discovered on Draco's arm the night he was branded with the Dark Mark, how it had flared to life in his flesh, and then burst even brighter outside of it, how it had flown into hundreds of lights, and one had sunk right into her own heart.

"All the composure, all the fear that held me rooted in that seat, watching my boy - it broke apart when the light hit me. I fell on my face, out of Bella's grasp, crying, and I felt - oh, it sounds so stupid - but I think for an instant I felt what Draco feels for that girl. I recognized it."

Snape rolled his eyes.

"It is holding back Draco's development as a Death Eater," she went on. "And if it goes on, it is going to get us all killed."

"Now, now, Narcissa, love affairs do not compare to the power of the Dark Lord. Your husband and yourself, for instance, do you not have a fabled love story of your own, yet Lucius was fully able to enter the Dark Lord's service?"

She lifted her chin. "Lucius was already a deputy before courting me. Our marriage came afterward."

Snape rose from his seat to face the small, high window in the dungeon wall behind his desk. Yes, of course. Lucius Malfoy married Narcissa Black during the first war. Draco had been born weeks before Potter, near the end. And ever since his marriage, Lucius had been the kind of bumbling mess who couldn't even snatch a glass orb from school children without pulling half of the Ministry of Magic down on his own head and winding up in Azkaban.

Snape sneered to himself. Maybe Harry Potter, the insufferable boy who lived wasn't solely responsible for every setback in the Dark Lord's plans. Perhaps the blame was best shared with Lucius Malfoy, the spineless husband who loved.

Narcissa would not sit watching Snape's back as he sneered at her family any longer. "Who is the girl, Severus? Draco hides her identity but you have been in this school all this time, watching. You must know who the witch is who inscribed that token on Draco's arm. She needs to be sent away from Hogwarts - gone. If she continues to hold Draco back, and he fails to satisfy the Dark Lord, all of our lives are forfeit."

Snape tented his fingers, bowing his head into them. The witch was Granger. Of course it was. But she was a conspicuous student, linked to Potter in all of his more infamous exploits, favourite of Minerva McGonagall, liable to raise alarms even in the Muggle world if her parents were to miss her, or sense anything amiss with her. Even more so than other students, she could not be easily shifted out of the way. He needed more time to puzzle over what to do.

"Parkinson," Narcissa blurted. "I reckon it must be her, unless you can think of anyone else."

This was better. This would do. Snape nodded. "No one else."

"Yes, Draco and the Parkinson girl have been something of an item since he first came to school." Narcissa was nodding. "Pretty, dark-haired, pure-blood. Daughter of Prender Parkinson."

Snape took his seat again. "It is a fearful thing, Narcissa, to throw a young girl into the path of the Dark Lord. Are you quite sure?"

Narcissa hesitated, then nodded, squaring her shoulders. "Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Thank you for confirming my suspicions, Severus. I'll see to it myself - "

"Allow me to investigate," he interrupted. "Make no move against any Hogwarts students without my clearance. Do you - understand?"

She let her posture fall. "As long as no harm will come to Draco."

Snape crossed his arms. "You - in - sult - me," was all he said as he sent Madam Malfoy away.

* * *

The Dark Lord sat fuming in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor. He loathed Sundays.

Bellatrix Lestrange held his wand-hand in hers, his palm upturned as she ministered to it with a cool jet from the end of her wand, clicking and cooing as she blew on his skin with her breath. His palm looked unchanged from its usual cool pallor but it didn't feel quite right. It had been warm and itchy ever since the night he had marked Draco Malfoy, the night he'd cast the witch's love token out of the boy's flesh.

"Enough," he hissed, jerking his hand out of Bellatrix's grip.

There was a crack as Narcissa reappeared in front of the cold, ashy fireplace, her head bowed.

He hardly looked at her as he said, "You have the name."

"I do," she answered. "Parkinson."

He laughed. "Prender Parkinson's girl? Who would have thought a Parkinson would have that kind of magic in her at that age? Are you quite sure?"

It was the same thing Snape had asked. She hesitated long enough that he waved his hand and said, "No matter. If it's not the Parkinson girl, we'll dispose of her and try another."

Narcissa's cheeks flushed. "Severus asked that we not act against any more Hogwarts students without consulting him first."

The Dark Lord snarled. "Severus has been at that school for too long. He is sentimental and will not be consulted."

"Not be consulted," Bellatrix echoed, laughing.

"Wormtail," the Dark Lord bellowed, "set more sentinels in Hogsmeade. When next Miss Parkinson leaves that infernal fortress they call a school, we will have her."

* * *

In the Great Hall, Ron was piling cakes on Hermione's plate. "When your birthday's on a weekend, it lasts for both days. Everyone knows that. Now eat at least seventeen of these," he was saying. "One for every year."

"I will eat one, because that's what adults do."

"What adults do, is they never have to say out loud that they're adults. And that's not the only way you're going about this all wrong already. You - will you stop watching the Slytherin table, both of you." Ron kicked Harry's toe under the table. "Honestly, I'm almost starting to feel sorry for the git. Let him alone for a little."

"He's coming," Harry announced, eyes back on the map. "Though - his path. Looks like he's kind of weaving from one side of the corridor to the other, like he's walking on a ship in rough seas."

Ron raised both his eyebrows. "Poetic."

Hermione grabbed at the map. "Is he sick?"

"How should I know? You know the map doesn't work that way."

Hermione's feet began to bounce beneath the table as she watched the door.

"He's not moving any closer. Just stopped," Harry said.

She sat for a moment more before making a slightly strangled sound and springing to her feet, head down, as if it made her departure less conspicuous, marching toward the open doors of the Great Hall.

Ron's eyebrows were still raised as he said, "Dramatic."

What came next was perhaps the most drama heightening thing that could have happened. In a rush of black robes, Professor Snape had risen from the teachers' table and was sailing down the centre aisle, as if he was racing Hermione for the doors. They met on the threshold and disappeared from view.

Outside the doors, collapsed against the wall, was Draco Malfoy. His face was transparently pale, slick with a cold sweat, his eyes half-closed. Hermione was on her knees at his side, his head cradled in her arms.

"Draco? Draco, what's wrong?"

He was muttering something - fast and unintelligible, almost like a spell, one she didn't know. His hands thrashed, tearing at his jumper, as if he was trapped inside it and desperate to get free.

"Draco, it's me." Could he hear her voice at all? "Professor Snape, what's happening?" she pleaded.

"Stand aside, Granger. Leave him to me."

"Should we get Madam Pomfrey?"

"What can she do?" he asked. "He needs a particular kind of treatment, he needs it immediately, and he needs it away from here."

Snape was struggling to arrange Draco's arm across his shoulders so he could hoist him to his feet to walk away. Hermione found it odd that Snape wouldn't simply immobilize him. Instead, they tussled with one another, no magic exchanged between them, Draco resisting and panicking, until Snape grew frustrated enough to hiss, "You fool, leave your clothing in place."

They were up on their feet, lurching toward the exit, bound for the point beyond the main gate where Snape could apparate away. Though Snape had fought to stay quiet, the scuffle in the Entrance Hall had drawn a small crowd. Flanked by Crabbe and Goyle, Pansy stood watching Draco stumble away. Ron and Harry had come as well. They moved to where Hermione still knelt on the stone floor, now alone.

"It's dark magic," Harry was saying as Ron raised Hermione from the ground. "Snape is taking him somewhere they can use dark magic that can't reach full power here."

"Mate, now's not the time," Ron said, one arm squeezing Hermione around the shoulders, his eyes focused across the room, at the group of Slytherins silently watching Draco and Snape tripping out the door.

Outside, the cool autumn evening air had a mildly reviving effect on Draco. "What is he doing?" he was able to ask Snape through gritted teeth. "It burns so bad. If he wants me, why doesn't he just take me?"

"No one can apparate in and out of the castle, of course, not even through a Dark Mark. You feel the call of the burn in your arm but until you get outside the protection of Hogwarts, you cannot answer, even if it means your own destruction. Come, Draco, you were once a clever boy. How did it get to this? You nearly exposed yourself in the Great Hall during a meal."

Draco swore, twisting free of Snape's hold. "Let them see it then."

Snape grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "We are about to step outside, where the Dark Lord's call will take you to him in an instantaneous, blistering blast of power. Before that moment, I caution you to remember your responsibilities, marshal your emotions, and shut - up."

Draco took three deep breaths before launching himself past the gates, tumbling without any warning to Snape into the range of the Dark Lord's pull on his Mark. Snape barely caught hold of his sleeve in time for them to be dragged away, together.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author Note: Dearest readers, don't panic and keep reading until the end of the chapter!**

Speechless, the small crowd in Hogwarts' Entrance Hall watched the massive doors settle to a close behind Malfoy and Snape. Harry looked like he could hardly contain himself from sprinting after them.

"Stand down, Harry. He's got Snape with him," Ron said too quietly for anyone but Harry and Hermione to hear. "He won't get up to anything with Snape around."

"Snape," Harry spat.

"Harry, stop," Hermione said. "Just - " She broke off, making that strangled sound again, bracing her forehead between her hands and turning in a circle.

Across the hall, Pansy Parkinson pulled the hood of her jumper over her head and set off toward the dungeons. Ron stood at Hermione's side watching Pansy's back as she stomped away.

McGonagall was in the hall now, craning her neck toward the doors. "Mr. Potter, what's happened?"

Behind Ron, Harry and Hermione began telling McGonagall the story of what they'd just seen in two very different ways, talking over each other, contradicting one another as they went. Their voices jumbled into noise just as Pansy was about to disappear down the stairwell.

He bolted.

"Parkinson," he whisper-called when he reached the top of the stairs.

She stopped but didn't turn around. "What is it, Weasley?"

He wasn't sure himself. But he was trotting down the steps after her, arriving to stand in front of her, talking to the top of her hood. "So," he began, almost conversationally, without any idea of how to comfort her, "what do you reckon happened with Malfoy and Snape just now?"

Her finger was in his face, her lips parted so her teeth showed, her eyes red and teary. "You tell Harry Potter that if he wants to spy on Draco he had better find the nerve to do it himself instead of sending his best friend after me in my moments of weakness to try to sweet talk me."

"Sweet talk you?"

Her finger poked sharply at his chest. "Yes, Weasley. I'm not stupid. You've been sabotaging my lipstick marks every time I leave them so you can drag out our - our - arrangement. I didn't catch it at first but it's clear now. This has been nothing more than your same old sloppy Gryffindor on Slytherin surveillance. Lipstick's a fair sight cheaper than polyjuice potion, I reckon. I've got to give you credit for learning to work smarter instead of harder."

Ron stumbled slightly backwards. "What are you on about, Parkinson?"

Pansy stepped forward, returning to her attack stance. "You don't fancy Granger. Not anymore. If you did, you'd be up in the Entrance Hall, holding her in your arms, being all wholesome and healthy and strong and making her forget about Draco Malfoy. But you're not in the Entrance Hall right now, are you?"

Ron blinked - once in Pansy's face, once at the low ceiling of the dungeon corridor, and once at his feet. "No, I suppose I'm not," he had to agree.

Pansy mimed throwing a handful of confetti in his face. "Congratulations, Weasley. You're over it. You're over Granger. And that means you've got nothing to gain from our arrangement, so consider it over too. That's the first part, and here's the second. You'd better go find another Slytherin girl to grass Draco up for Harry Potter. It won't be me."

Ron grabbed the wrist of her fake-confetti-throwing hand. "You listen to me for a minute. Harry is out of his mind and on his own on this one. Hounding Malfoy is his way of grieving his newly dead godfather, and while I'm sympathetic, I'm not helping him with the Malfoy-is-a-Death-Eater conspiracy theory. Neither is Hermione."

Pansy sneered, tugging at her wrist. "Oh, of course she's not."

"And another thing," Ron said, pulling her closer, speaking lower. "I'll be the one to let you know when I'm over Hermione Granger."

He let her wrench herself free. "And finally, I'll have you know, Pansy Parkinson, that I did not sabotage your lipstick marks - not on purpose. But I'm not sorry they were sabotaged. It gave me a reason to keep on thinking about you kissing me again."

Footfalls were sounding behind Ron now, the beginnings of the sounds of the rest of Slytherin house coming back to their common room after dinner. Ron and Pansy stood inches apart, wide-eyed, his breath coming heavily enough to move her fringe, both of them stunned at what they might have unleashed.

Crabbe shouldered Ron hard as he passed through the corridor. Ron didn't fall but he did come to his senses, turned, and left her there.

* * *

Draco was on his knees on the floor of the drawing room in his own home. The burning agony in his arm had stopped but Snape still had a hold of his sleeve, muscling him to his feet.

"Sincerest apologies for the delay, my Lord. Draco is still learning the finer points of his new status." Snape nudged Draco on the back of the head to get him to bow.

The Dark Lord rose from Lucius Malfoy's armchair, his arms outstretched. "You've come," he said, advancing, his fingers flexing. "Good boy, my chosen boy. Alas, we have been neglecting your education, so I have called you here, for a lesson."

Draco glanced at his mother as he nodded at the Dark Lord. Once again, Aunt Bella was holding her in place in her armchair.

The Dark Lord laughed, close enough now for Draco to feel his breath on his face. "We see you are still much too shy of me. That is not as it should be, not for someone with a destiny like yours. Tonight, we shall grow closer."

He waved a hand. "Severus, you may go." Narcissa and Draco each startled, gulping back twin senses of panic as Severus spun toward the door and stepped outside.

The Dark Lord had taken Draco's left arm in his hands, kneading his flesh, vanishing enough of Draco's clothing to leave him standing in front of the hearth in just his trousers and shoes again. He held Draco's arm as close to his face as he could without touching it to his lips.

Grimly disgusted, Draco turned his face away.

The Dark Lord hummed. "The Mark has cured well. Such fine skin he has, Madam Malfoy. Lovely boy." He dragged his fingertips from Draco's wrist to elbow and back again, before forcing out a breath against his skin.

Draco wasn't sure whether he had truly seen it or just imagined it, flashing in the corner of his eye as he cringed and looked away - the lingering flare of faded blue in the negative spaces of the Mark, flickering on the skin that had not been burnt. The Dark Lord's exhale became an inhale, long and deep as if he was sniffing Draco's scent, deepening into a throaty sucking sound, ending in a choking snarl. Draco jerked instinctively, moving to fling his arm away. But it remained locked in the Dark Lord's grip a moment longer, the monster proving he could keep it at will for as long as he chose.

"Your love token has been on my mind," he said. "It was a childish spell, easily vanquished, but what's childish is often what's most troublesome."

He leaned in close again, his mouth at Draco's ear, his tongue flicking snakelike, brushing dryly against Draco as he whispered, "There is much for you to learn about love. It is a shard of glass in your eye. Poison in your liver. A knife in your gut. When you love, you give someone the power to destroy you. To court love is to court weakness, to invite madness and death. Have your lust. Have all you want. But take it with the degraded, the deranged."

He nodded at Bellatrix. Whether she overheard or not, it didn't matter to him.

The Dark Lord took a step away, his voice returning to its usual volume, his arms outstretched to draw Draco's attention to his body. "At this moment, you are my chosen boy, but you are not my son. I have no son. Or, to state it more perfectly, I AM my son, as I am my own father. Immortal - deathless through my magic. I need no offspring but myself, going on forever, in my own eternal life."

He lowered his arms, approaching Draco from behind, reaching over the top of his head to smooth his sleek blond hair back from his forehead, the way Pansy had done on the train. With cold, splayed fingers, he stroked Draco's hair, he hissed into his ear. "Do - not - love."

He turned away with a swirl of his robes and sat in Lucius's chair again. "It is a hard lesson. But consider the risk, the danger to the pretty, dark-haired witch whose handiwork sullied your arm. Parkinson, yes I have her name. Think of her. As you grow to be more like your master, you become her doom, if not by my hand, then eventually by your own. For you can have only one master, Draco, and you have chosen me. The moment you did, love died."

This was the flourish at the end of his speech. He had meant for the final syllables to echo solemnly in the silence of the dark drawing room. But in place of silence, Narcissa was weeping from her chair again.

He snapped his fingers at Bellatrix. "Take them away. Bring Severus."

Narcissa had Draco's hands in hers as Bellatrix drove them into the hall. "My darling," was all the Dark Lord heard her say to her son before Bellatrix slammed the door.

Draco couldn't bring himself to speak to her yet. At the foot of the grand staircase of Malfoy Manor, he held her off, summoning a shirt from his upstairs bedroom, covering himself, twisting away from his mother as she tried to help him with the buttons. Snape wouldn't have betrayed a student in his care. The only other person who could have told the Dark Lord Pansy's name was Narcissa herself.

She knew he knew it. "My darling, believe me, I never wanted any harm to befall your Pansy but the Dark Lord insisted I name her. Don't you see that I had to? We can't afford any more mistakes, Draco. Your father - "

Barely choking back his fury, he said, "By the stars, mother, I know what's at stake. By now, I know better than you. But what can I do? Tell me. What did he mean to say back there? Is he going to hunt an innocent girl over a love note scratched on my arm? How do I prove to him it's not a threat? That it has nothing to do with him? And Pansy - why can't any of you leave anything alone?"

She threw herself toward him, covering his mouth with her hands. "Hush, Draco. I don't know, darling. I don't know. And as for the Dark Lord, he's demanded nothing from Pansy today. He's promised nothing either. All you can do is work hard. Focus. No disappointments. No romance. And keep Pansy inside Hogwarts. For her safety. My darling boy, please..."

Inside the drawing room, Snape clicked his heels like a soldier at the ready, waiting on the threshold of the drawing room. The Dark Lord extended his palm.

"Severus, examine my hand."

"My Lord," he said as he knelt on the rug beside the armchair. He drew his wand and swept it back and forth, by tiny degrees, in every direction, until a dim blue light pulsed briefly beneath the skin.

"You see it?"

"Yes, my Lord. Faint but - vexing." It was the residue of Granger's charm. Always showing off, too thorough for her own good. Foolish, sentimental children. What had they done? There was nothing to do but feign ignorance. "A lingering effect of the trouble with Potter and his headmaster at the ministry?"

The Dark Lord sneered. "No, a complication ostensibly from a love token left on Draco Malfoy's arm before the Mark was administered. Tell no one."

"Of course."

He withdrew his hand. "Madam Malfoy blames a schoolgirl for it, but it cannot be. Magic like this is not a child's. My suspicion is that someone is protecting the boy, either in this house or from inside Hogwarts, trying to fool us into blaming a young lover." The Dark Lord looked hard into Snape's face as he said it.

"Dastardly," was all Snape said.

He went on. "Still, we will begin by ruling out the possibility of precocious young witch. Let those who have orchestrated this see the blood-soaked cost of using a young girl as a shield. See to it, Severus. Until then, send me a counter-curse - something for relief."

"Of course."

"Severus," he said. "If we do find a young witch at the root of this, and if she must be brought before us to reverse this glitch, she will not survive."

"Of course, my Lord."

"Take your wretched boy and go."

* * *

Hermione sat on the floor in the dungeon corridor, across the hall from where the entrance to the Slytherin common room might appear. She was fighting with Harry so she was in no position to ask to borrow his cloak, but she was getting rather expert at disillusionment charms and sat coiled in one, fading into the dimly lit stonework behind her. She was dressed in her uniform and prefect's badge just in case she was discovered and needed an excuse to be out of bed so late.

The castle was quiet and dark. He still hadn't come back. Maybe he never would.

Her knees were drawn up to her eye-level. She rested her forehead against them and hoped she wouldn't cry again.

At last, there were voices at the top of the stairs, low and hissing. She stood, inching along the corridor on the toes of her hard-soled school shoes, close enough to see the figures at the top of the stairs - Snape and Draco.

She let out her breath of relief so forcefully they would have heard her if Snape hadn't been deep in a tirade. He had pushed Draco against a wall and was whispering into his face. Hermione thought she might have made out the word "Parkinson." Draco was making conciliatory promises, slipping slowly sideways, away from Snape and into the stairwell.

"Do not close your mind to me," she heard Snape say, his final parting exclamation. "I can't help you if you lock me out."

"When I need your help, I'll know how to find you."

Hermione startled. She'd never heard anyone at school speak to Snape that way, let alone his pet Draco. With that remark, he had got free of Snape. He was coming down the steps, not stumbling in pain but moving with his usual agility and speed, barely missing trampling her as she stood charmed to near invisibility at the foot of the stairs.

He passed too fast and she chased after him, reaching out for his robes, afraid Snape would hear if she called out. Draco's hand was passing over the wall. He was about to speak the password and disappear into the common room.

She jumped onto his back, the spell falling away. "You're here!"

"Hermione!"

She hopped back onto the floor, pivoting in front of him, taking his head in her hands, scanning his face with serious eyes. "You're not sick anymore."

He stared down at her. "You waited here? All this time? For me?"

She blushed, nodding.

His arms encircled her, drawing her in at the small of her back, lifting her onto her toes to kiss him. His mouth was hot and desperate, searching. "Please tell me you love me," he said against her lips.

"Yes, I love you."

"Love you," he answered back, repeating it like an incantation as he worked his lips over her jaw and chin, onto her neck.

She tipped her head and he swiveled both of them to support her back against the door to the common room, revealed and waiting for its password, hovering in an in-between state.

"You glorious, powerful witch," he said against her skin.

She laughed breathily, her fingers in his hair. "I am, aren't I?"

He was back at her mouth, lifting her up again, braced against the ancient, enchanted door. One of her hands came out of his hair to smooth the fabric of his clothes against his chest, slipping her fingers between the buttons, to his warm skin. All at once she said, "Where'd this shirt come from? I don't know it."

He wasn't interested but knew there was nothing to do when she raised a question but answer right away. "From home."

She broke away. "Snape took you home? Home to - them?"

Draco straightened up, letting out a long breath as his head fell back, his eyes closed. What he wanted was to violate centuries of tradition, open the door, bring her to his Slytherin dorm room, and keep her there. For reasons that had nothing to do with tradition, it was impossible. What they needed to do instead was to talk.

"Yes, I've been home. And I have some things to tell you and - to show you," he said. The door to the common room faded back into the stone work.

"Tonight?"

"Yes." He turned his back to her, stooping. "Here, hop on my back again. That was nice. Why don't I take you everywhere like that?"

She smirked. "Because it brings my bum dangerously close to hanging out of my skirt."

"I stand by the question."

"Draco Malfoy - "

"There's no one around. Just hop up and I'll take you somewhere we can talk."

She jumped and he caught her legs as her arms clamped around his shoulders, her face against his. He turned and pecked her cheek. "By the stars, it is good to see you."

They set off up the stairs.


	6. Chapter 6

With Hermione still riding on his back, Draco sat sideways on a bench at the Slytherin table in the dim, deserted Great Hall. Even as he set her down on the wooden seat, she left her feet crossed in his lap, her arms around his neck, her face tipped against his head.

She hummed in his ear. "This is nice, even if it is on the Slytherin side of the hall."

He smiled but the initial enthusiasm with which he'd greeted her, all snogging and ardent declarations of love in the dungeon corridor, was simmering into sadness as he faced the conversation ahead of them.

She kissed his cheek. "Tired?"

He nodded. "So very tired."

"We don't have to - "

"Yes, love. I'm afraid we do."

She withdrew her feet, straightened her clothes, and sat primly beside him. "Show me."

Perhaps it was mostly ceremonial, and she had known all along it was there. The revelation would be momentous all the same. Everything would change once she saw it, though neither of them was sure exactly how.

She held her breath as he bunched his sleeve into the crook of his elbow and turned his arm toward her. She had seen photographs and drawings of Dark Marks in books and in the press. She had seen one conjured in the sky over the quidditch world cup campsite in her fourth year. None of this past exposure prepared her to see one in living skin. Its black lines were not made with pigments but with scar tissue, flesh not dyed but burned black, hard and raised, dead.

Of course, what was most horrible of all was that the Mark was on his flesh - Draco's, his arm that held her, danced with her, his smooth white skin that she knew by smell, taste, temperature, texture, everything - it was now defiled.

He held the arm between them, extended like a filthy specimen for them to grimace over. She leaned past it, her hands on his face, rising to her knees beside him on the bench to kiss his forehead. "Draco," she crooned. "My sweet Draco, I am so sorry."

He choked out a single sob of relief, and a tear trailed out if his eye, onto her hand still braced beneath his cheekbone. She kissed his eyelids, his wet lashes. "You don't deserve this. It's not you."

His marked arm twitched between them, as if he had begun to move to embrace her, naturally, as he had done for years, but then recoiled in disgust at himself. She sensed it and answered by pulling at his elbow until the arm was free, and slung over her back.

"You keep holding me, Draco Malfoy."

With both arms, he pulled her close.

"Does it still hurt?" she asked after a moment, her face against his neck.

She felt him swallow, his voice hoarse. "Sometimes. Today, when Snape took me away, I must have been out of my mind with pain."

She sat back. "Can you answer some more questions? I've read about Marks, and Harry and Mr. Weasley think they know things, but I want to be sure I understand."

"Hermione, I'm not sure I understand it myself. But I'll do my best." He moved to pull his sleeve back into place, hiding the Mark, but she stopped him with her hand against his.

"What happens if you touch it?" she began.

He sighed. "Like a lot of magic, it depends on what I intend by the touch. Most of the time, nothing happens." He swept his fingertips over the mark so show her. "But if I press it with a finger or wand with the intent to call him, he'll come. And if he decides I don't have a worthy reason for calling him, I'll get cursed, maybe to death."

"Wait," she said. "What would happen if you called him here, to a place so well protected against apparation? Would he get dashed against the wards and die outside the castle, just like that?"

Draco frowned. "I - I don't know."

"No, that must not work," Hermione said. "If it did, Snape would have offed him that way ages ago."

He raised his eyebrows. "Snape? Why would Snape do that? Snape is a…"

He trailed off, and they sat staring at each other, their brains clicking through the implications of what each of them had just said. The Snape Draco knew was not the same person as the Snape Hermione knew. They didn't know what to make of it, but knew they had better stop talking about him immediately.

Draco forced a cough. "The Dark Lord must have some kind of agency when it comes to responding to calls, otherwise we'd have way too much power over him. Seems like a plot hole in a shoddily edited story but - I dunno. Still, I'd rather not be the one to experiment with it."

She let it go. "So what happens if I touch it?"

Her fingers were moving toward his arm but he snatched it away, holding it tightly against his chest, out of her reach. "That's something else we need to talk about."

He told her of how the love token she had inscribed on his arm had flared to life before the Dark Lord's eyes on the night he had marked Draco, how it had risen out of his flesh and scattered into hundreds of lights over all the assembled Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself.

"At first, he mocked it. Laughed and acted like your spell and all the feelings behind it were nothing, sad little childish jokes. But when he called me to him tonight, it was different. He was deadly serious and gave me this long, creepy speech about how Death Eaters can't really love, saying I'd just end up destroying anyone I brought close to me - "

"He's lying," she interrupted. "We don't destroy each other by staying close. That's how we save each other. Don't listen to him."

He laughed and took her hand. "I hate him so much that, unless he threatens me with the extinction of my whole family, I'll subvert whatever he tells me to do. Even if I hated you, I'd force myself to fall in love with you now just to disobey him."

She faked a scoff, taking her hand back to shove at him. "Nice."

His laughter quieted to a smile as he leaned forward to burrow his face into her hair, his lips pressing a slow kiss on her neck just below her ear. "Persecution just makes being with you even better."

She shivered at his kiss, nestled her cheek against the side of his head.

But," he said, sitting back. "He actually encouraged me to find someone to f- I mean, to have a physical relationship with, as long as I keep it cruel and unequal."

She coughed out a bitter laugh. "Well, I suppose there's got to be someone here who could see to romanticizing angsty junior Death Eater mystique."

"Or at the very least, someone desperate to touch my hair."

"You are not altogether un-horrible," she said, smirking, her arms crossed to keep from touching his hair herself.

He turned his back to her and lay down, his head in her lap, growing serious again. "I'll tell you what was most striking about our meeting today. It wasn't so much what he said, but the fact that he changed his story. He went from sneering and being dismissive of the idea of me being in love to threatening and menacing me about it. Something changed his mind. Something," he paused, looking up at her over his brow. "I think something spooked him. And I think it was you, Hermione."

She raised her eyebrows, uncrossing her arms. "Tell me the rest."

"So your original spell," he began again, "revealed itself when breathed on."

"Right."

"And now, when I breathe on the place where your token used to be, there's nothing." He demonstrated. "But when the Dark Lord was inspecting it today, I thought I might have seen something flickering, like a trace of it was still hidden deep inside me." He raised his arm, bringing it close to her face. "Breathe on me, love. See if the spell you left remembers its caster and responds to you."

She held his wrist and breathed hotly against the Mark. They waited. Nothing happened. He swore.

He was letting his arm fall away when she tightened her grip on it. "One more time," she said, "with intent." She bent her head closer to the Mark, and then even closer, lead as if by some magical instinct, until she found herself kissing it, both the scarred, blackened skin and the smooth healthy whiteness around it.

Afraid for her, Draco jerked his arm away. And he saw it. There it was, fragmented, broken but visible, glowing faint and blue, her handwriting on his skin, not quite readable anymore, but they already knew what it said: hope.

Her gasp at the sight of it quickly became a laugh, delighted, disbelieving.

Draco sat up. "I knew it," he said, crushing her in his arms. "Only you - Hermione, what have you done, you brilliant girl?"

She laughed against his shoulder. "That spell," she was saying, her mind working, "it's an ancient one. I read about it in a book from the tenth century, from the archives of the Mitrian Monks. I'll find it again and read everything I can about it. Maybe there will be something useful in it - something to help us out of all this."

He sat back, taking her hands. "Slow down, alright?" he said. "This isn't the first spell of this kind that's ever been used against the Dark Lord." He stopped, swallowing hard, fighting something. "It's not the first spell he's faced that works on - on love."

He waited as she remembered on her own. "Harry's mum," she said, "Lily Evans, the spell she used to save Harry. You think our token is like hers? If she were here to kiss Harry's scar, would it flash blue?"

Draco shifted and shrugged. "All we know is that what she did worked, and that she died all the same." He gathered Hermione close again, pulling her into his lap, tucking her head under his chin. "I won't have that. I'd rather the Dark Lord just have his way with me rather than have him hurt you. I'm not a baby, like Potter was. I'll gamble with defending myself if the only alternative is for you to waste your life defending me."

She said nothing, but let him hold her. There was no point in arguing yet. They needed to learn more about the spell and that would have to wait until the library opened in the morning. She sighed and straightened up, leaning out of his arms.

"We should go to bed," she said.

Draco's face flushed red. "Wh-what? Now?"

She glanced at her wristwatch. "Yes, now. It's almost one o'clock in the morning. We can't start to work on this until tomorrow. And look at your poor raccoon eyes. You're completely knackered. You need sleep."

"Oh - oh sleep," he said, as if he'd only just learned about it. "Sleep - you sleep in Gryffindor tower, I sleep in Slytherin."

"Right." She batted his arm. "What did you think I was…?"

He caught her hand. "Nothing! Nothing - just that, seeing as love is so powerful and all - maybe, before too long - I mean, eventually - "

She shook her head, grinning. "Draco Malfoy, I will see you in the morning."

He kept hold of her hand as she stood to leave.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "Like your heart is going to be broken if I leave."

He tried to smile. "I'm not doing it on purpose."

She laughed softly, cradling his head in her arms. "You are adorable - and brave to defy them like this instead of hiding from me or pushing me away. Thank you for showing me, for trusting me."

"I do trust you," he said, pressing his lip on her hand. He wanted to say more, to promise her he would keep her safe and that, in the end, everything would be alright. But there wasn't enough truth in it, not yet. Though, for the first time since he was marked, there was hope - something to build truth on.

* * *

By the time he reached the Slytherin common room, alone, Draco's energy, based in adrenaline and endorphins, was gone. He was barely awake as he made his way through the greenish dimness of the sprawling, quiet room. In the late night stillness, one of the last things he wanted to hear was the voice calling his name.

"Stop right there, Draco Malfoy."

The voice was Pansy's. She was curled under a fur throw on a sofa with a view of the door, rubbing her eyes and demanding to speak with him. He startled at the sight of her, remembering all of a sudden her role in tonight's nightmare, and the danger she was in.

"Pansy. You're right," he said. "We do need to talk. But can it be tomorrow? I'm not even sure what to say yet. I need some time to think it over. And I need to sleep. I've been all the way home and back tonight."

"How very inconvenient for you," she said, getting to her feet, letting him know without a word how inconvenient it was for her to sit up all this time.

"Thanks for waiting to check on me," he said. "I'm fine. Just tired."

She was getting closer to him, stopping when she was near enough to smell Hermione's scent on his clothes. She wrinkled her nose. "You smell like you've been dragged through the mud."

His posture was instantly rigid. "Pansy, I'm not going to talk to you if you're like this."

She lowered her chin. "You just said you're not going to talk to me tonight anyway. You're running off to bed no matter what I want. So what does it matter?"

He took a step toward her. "Pansy, stop. And promise me you won't leave the castle until you hear me out later tomorrow."

"I'll promise you nothing," she said, far too loudly for the time of night.

"And don't go anywhere alone," he pressed on.

She yelled a laugh into the sleeping dormitory. "What does that mean? Are you saying I can stay with you for the rest of the night? Lead the way, Draco. Take me with you. Tuck me right into your bed."

He let out an exasperated breath. "You know that's not what - Pansy," he said, calling her back from where she was tugging at the door to his room. "Look, I went home tonight and while I was there, I realized there's been a mix-up, a case of mistaken identity. And it means you're not safe."

"I'm Prender Parkinson's daughter. Pure-blooded as a witch can be. I am perfectly safe."

"Pansy, you know as well as anyone that blood purity is just a weak excuse for - no - will you listen? I can't explain it all to you. It's dangerous and I don't really understand it myself but please, take my advice and stay safe. Don't leave the castle, and don't go anywhere alone."

"As if you care," she snarled.

"You are one of my oldest friends, Pansy. You're like family to me. Of course I care."

"Shut up, Draco!"

He shushed her in return. "Keep it down or you'll have Nott out here," he warned her. She looked up at him and could tell by the shift in his facial expression that he was warming up to the idea of handing her off to Theo Nott, like she was a quaffle in a quidditch match.

"Don't be bothered with me, Draco," she said. "Just look me in the face and admit that you're in love with Hermione Granger."

"I'm in love with Hermione Granger," he said without a trace of hesitation.

She staggered backward, ever so slightly.

"I'm sorry for every time I dragged you into the middle of it. That was self-serving of me and a terrible thing to do to you. I assumed you were more detached than you were. But believe me, I do care about you. And I need you to listen to me and stay in Hogwarts until - until I don't know when, I'm sorry."

She was speechless, her delicate, pretty chin quivering, near tears.

"Promise me, Pansy. Please."

For an instant, she let him take her hand. Despite the coolness of the Slytherin dorm, his skin was still warm from his time upstairs - with Granger.

She tugged her hand out of his. "No, Draco. From now on, what you want plays no part in what I choose to do."

He was calling after her, following her as far as he could into the girls' corridor. "Now's not the time for this, Pansy. Listen to me."

"I didn't say I wouldn't do what you wanted," she said, turning to call back at him, knowing everyone must be stirring in their beds, rather hoping they were. "But I didn't say I would do it either. All I said was that it is none of your business."

With the slam of a door, she was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

After not nearly enough sleep, Draco woke up with three tasks to accomplish. Each of them was urgent, each of them was massive, each of them had to do with a different woman.

The first one was ringing around his ears as soon as he stepped out of his room.

"Malfoy, whatever did you do to Pansy last night?" Daphne Greengrass was in the common room, demanding to know. "All the shouting outside our bedroom doors?" she clarified when he feigned having no idea what she meant.

He growled something about it being none of anyone's business. This inflamed the situation and an instant later he was weathering the complaints of everyone in the common room at once, all of them protesting that if it was truly no one else's business, then there was no good reason why the commotion of it forced everyone awake in the middle of the night.

Draco declined to defend himself any further, storming up to breakfast alone instead.

At the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, all of the students within ten seats of Draco stood up and moved elsewhere as soon as he sat down. Further down the table, on the other side, he saw a similar buffer of empty seats between Pansy and the rest of their housemates.

"Oh, I see," Draco muttered.

It seemed his house was not satisfied with punishing him and Pansy for the noise in the night by merely shouting at them en mass in the common room. No, their offense had been deemed serious enough to be punishable by a traditional Slytherin shunning. For the rest of the day, Draco and Pansy would be ignored by every Slytherin in school. Most of the time, Draco would have agreed with the rest of his house that this was the best way to handle conflict. No one got hurt and no one had to lose face apologizing either.

But it was a rather unfortunate development in light of his need to keep Pansy from spending the day alone and unprotected. Someone had to stay near her, and with two other tasks for him to take care of today, it couldn't be Draco.

He went to sit in one of the empty chairs beside her. As he sat, he could almost feel the wave of regret flooding off the rest of the Slytherins who were cross with them mostly because they hadn't yet found out what they had to talk about in the dead of night, and now they were sitting too far away to overhear it.

"I know, Draco," Pansy said, her hand in his face before he could say a word. "Don't leave the castle and don't go anywhere alone."

"So you're going to listen to me?"

She lowered her hand, scowling into his face. "Wouldn't you like to know."

He leaned in close to whisper to her, looking from a distance like he was nibbling sensuously at her ear. "The problem is, I brought a charm home with me, and when the - when you-know-who found it, he demanded to know who made it. And when I wouldn't answer, my mother assumed it was you. So that's what he believes. He's raging mad about it, for some reason, and I'm afraid you might get picked up and dragged off for questioning."

She shifted sideways in her seat, away from him. "So let him question me then. I've done nothing wrong. Not everyone around here is a habitual sneak. You-know-who can pick through my brain 'til his wand rots to pieces. I've got nothing to hide."

Draco shuddered. "Pansy, you don't understand what that would be like - "

"Who made the charm they found?" she interrupted. "Obviously it wasn't me. Who was it? Not that I can't tell. It was her, wasn't it?" Pansy glared over her shoulder at the Gryffindor table. "If they pick me up, I'll tell them it was Hermione Granger's charm, and they'll send me back here safe and sound, with their gratitude, in a heartbeat."

Draco grabbed her arm in both of his hands. "Pansy, it won't go that way. Remember what they did to Cedric Diggory? He was pure-blood too and it didn't matter to them at all. It never really does. They'll see you as a spare who knows too much and - and you might not make it back at all."

She brought the fist of her free hand down hard on the tabletop. "Of course you'd say that. Every girl but yours is a spare, yeah?"

"Pansy, that's not - "

"Everything alright, Parkinson?" It was Ron Weasley, standing with his fists clenched, breaching the empty space around them.

Pansy groaned, pulling her arm out of Draco's grip. "Stand down, Weasley. This is a private matter."

Ron was shaking his head. "Nope. Much too loud to be private."

He was twitching for a confrontation with Malfoy, something in public, something about how to treat a girl - a message to everyone about which of them was the better man. So he couldn't have been more shocked when instead of rising to meet him, Malfoy grabbed his robes and hauled him down to sit on the other side of Pansy on the Slytherin bench.

"Weasley, thank the stars you came. Right. Now you need to keep this secret," Draco began. "I wouldn't normally burden you with it, but I'm getting no help from any Slytherins today and I'm desperate."

Ron leaned forward, both of the boys hissing at each other over Pansy's plate. "I'll agree to nothing unless you tell me everything."

Draco leaned in closer. "Fine. The fact is, my mother has mistaken a charm Hermione made for me as being made by Pansy. It's a rather impressive and advanced charm, and it's attracted the interest of some of my parents' - more dangerous friends."

Ron's blanched white under his freckles. "Dangerous friends," he repeated, understanding perfectly.

Draco nodded, his eyes wide and dark. "Yes. I'm afraid Pansy might get taken away and questioned about it. If she does, I can tell you, it will definitely turn out badly."

"For the love of Boggarts, Draco," Pansy interrupted. "I can handle myself."

"This one," he went on, pointing at Pansy but looking at Ron, "says she'll handle it by simply grassing up Hermione, easy as you please."

Ron groaned. "Why'd'you have to be like that, Parkinson?"

"I'll be however I like."

"Anyway," Draco shouted over them before dropping his voice again. "To keep everyone safe, I'm asking you, Weasley, to make sure Pansy stays in the castle where she can't be snatched, and that she's never alone even on the school grounds until these petty housemates of ours are finished with today's ceremonial shunning."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Bloody Slytherins."

"You've got all the same classes as her anyways, haven't you? Mine are a bit different. But for you, most of the time, you won't even notice you're watching her."

Pansy let out a frustrated exclamation. "I do not need a big, loud ginger nanny."

"That is precisely what you need," Draco said. "You're too stubborn to listen to good advice and this is what you get instead."

"Drop the savior act, Malfoy," Weasley said. "I'll happily tail Parkinson for the rest of the day, but not for you. I'm doing it because you've spooked me, good and proper, with your family's creepy connections to the worst of people. If I'm protecting Parkinson from anyone, it's from the likes of you."

Draco stood up. "Fine, however you like it. Just stay together."

"Can you believe him?" was the last thing Draco heard Weasley saying as he grabbed a slice of dry toast and sprinted up to the owlery.

* * *

The second task of the day had to do with Draco's mother, and the ongoing and harrowing problem of her safety. While Snape had been meeting in private with the Dark Lord in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, Draco had been in the hall with his mother, listening to her plead with him to offer some kind of sign that he was making any progress at all with the mission the Dark Lord had given him that summer.

Though packages were being inspected on arrival at Hogwarts, students' letters were still private and Draco had managed to receive Borgin's first set of instructions on how to begin repairing the vanishing cabinet. The very sight of the letter, written in Borgin's slanting ornate handwriting, the ink jagged as if he wrote with one of the cursed antiques from his own shop, made Draco queasy. He'd experimented enough to prove that the cabinet was indeed broken, but otherwise, he hadn't been able to bring himself to work on it in earnest.

Now with his newfound hope, he had reasons to feel less queasy, and reasons to act quickly to buy himself and his mother more time while he and Hermione looked for another solution. He would create a distraction - provide the kind of sign his mother wanted even if at its heart it was little more than an empty gesture.

Creating such a sign meant going back to Borgin, and taking off his hands an infamous cursed opal necklace that had been in the shop so long and displayed so prominently that Draco couldn't remember a time when he hadn't known it. Anyone who'd ever been shopping in the Diagon Alley neighbourhood should recognize it and know to avoid it. At least, Draco assumed everyone made it off the beaten path and into Knockturn Alley, to Borgin's shop. He'd seen Potter in there more than once, at any rate.

If he sent the necklace to Dumbledore, it would count as an assassination attempt, but one to which the headmaster would definitely not succumb.

In the owlery, Draco wrote a note to Gringotts advising them to release the galleons Borgin was asking to buy the necklace. The second note was to Borgin himself, agreeing to buy the necklace and instructing him to send it to a nest box at the post office in Hogsmeade, where people without their own owls sent and received their letters and packages. It was a system that worked well enough for the poor and for the sneaky. Safely wrapped, the necklace could remain in the box in Hogsmeade until Draco's contact in town was able to pass it to a Hogwarts student to turn it over to Filch, to deliver it to Dumbledore, who would, no doubt, dispose of it. It was a complicated, risky path, but the only one Draco could see.

He scratched his own owl on its downy head as he passed it by and sent his messages by one of the school owls instead. Standing in the unglazed window of the owlery, he watched the plain little bird winging away. It was a weak and fake murder plot, but it had shaken him all the same. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and went downstairs for class.

* * *

By lunchtime, Pansy had stopped glaring over her shoulder at Ron. She had even slowed down her pace to walk through the corridors at his side. As they came into the dining hall, she was listening to him complain about their astronomy homework.

"Please Weasley, it may surprise you to hear this, but not all girls like to talk about schoolwork during lunch breaks." She sat down at the Slytherin table, which was promptly vacated by the shunning masses.

Ron glanced over at the Gryffindor table, where Hermione was ranting to Harry about their astronomy assignment. He sat down in Pansy's empty section, expecting to be swiftly evicted by some of the Slytherin heavies. It had been a while since Ron had tangled with Crabbe or Goyle and he was sure they'd be keen to go again. But no one came near him.

"Blimey, they are serious about this shafting business."

"Shunning," Pansy corrected him.

"All this for having a loud argument in the middle of the night? We row at all hours in Gryffindor all the time."

"That's because you're all unhinged. We're civilized in Slytherin." She was helping herself to a bowl of stew. "What are you waiting for?" she asked when he didn't move to take anything for himself.

He shook himself and began dishing up. "Everyone civilized except for you and Malfoy then?"

"Oh, I'm civil enough," she said, Ron still wholly unconvinced. "But do you know what Draco said to me last night? We'll see how civil you feel once you hear it, Weasley. He told me, straight up, that he is in love with Granger."

Ron slowed in ladelling stew into his bowl. "I can accept," he began, "that there's a certain chemistry between them, enough to keep them snogging in shady corners for going on two years. But they're not in love. Love is different."

Pansy turned to watch him buttering a thick slice of brown bread. He talked about love as if he knew it, as if what he'd felt for Granger all this time wasn't just a crush. He talked about love as if it made him infinitely sad. She continued more carefully. "I'm sorry, Weasley. But that's exactly what he said. And it was believable - so believable it completely gutted me." She looked away, into her bowl, stirring at the stew. "What do you think Granger would say about it if you asked her?"

"Hermione?" He turned around to look directly at her. She was eating over a book while Harry talked to Dean and Seamus about quidditch. Malfoy sat by himself reading a book too. "I dunno. But let's not let it ruin our appetites. Eat up. We can be miserable later." He balanced a buttered slice of bread on the rim of Pansy's bowl.

She cleared her throat. "What have you got to do during the free period after lunch? I need to know so I can decide whether I'll keep playing along as if you're protecting me today."

"I usually head down to the quidditch pitch for a bit of practice on my own around now. Flying maneuvres and whatnot." This was usually where his conversations with Hermione ended. But maybe it didn't have to be like that with every girl not on already on the team. "You much of a flyer, Parkinson?"

She smirked. "My parents put me in figure flying when I was younger."

Ron's eyes widened. "With the music and the costumes?" He laughed.

"Shut it, Weasley. It's actually very athletic."

"Right, it's spectacular." He stood up. "Come on then, let's go for a fly, Parkinson. Not schoolwork, but not out of school bounds. Perfect really. How about it?"

She took one more look in Draco's direction. His seat was now empty, and so was Hermione's. She tugged on Ron's arm as she stood up. "Go on then."

* * *

In the library, Draco moved directly to the back wall, over the rope of the restricted section, now unrestricted to him as a NEWT student. Hermione was there already, wearing a pair of white gloves though she was turning the pages of a large, decrepit codex with her wand rather than her fingers.

Draco grabbed her around the waist, leaned over her shoulder from behind, and kissed her cheek as ardently as a cheek can be kissed. All the while he was glancing at the entrance, keeping watch.

"Get off me," she laughed, her wand jostling with alarming force between the delicate pages as she swayed forward with him. "The Mitrian Monks do not approve."

"If they wrote spells for love charms they won't mind much," he said as he kissed along her face, toward her ear.

"Well, Madam Pince doesn't write love charms - " The rest of her protest disappeared in a gasp as his lips nipped her earlobe.

"We don't know that." He released her ear and started down her throat.

She shivered and sunk back against him. "And your tricky Malfoy passageway spells can't hide the entrance to the," she drew in a breath and let it shake through her, "restricted section," she finished much more slowly than she usually spoke. "Draco, I really can't concentrate…"

Which meant he had succeeded in his aim, and now he pulled his mouth away from her neck and commanded himself to focus on the book on the table in front of them. "Right. Concentrate."

"Let go of my waist too."

He sighed, stepped away, and watched her profile as she explained what she was reading. "So looking at it now, the night I inscribed the spell on you, in the hospital wing under the influence of about a dozen potions, I didn't remember just one spell but this entire section." She pinched a centimetre of thick, bound parchment pages between her gloved fingers. "I mixed them up, making a custom spell out of all these ancient ones, and adding a little of myself too."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "You remixed the Mitrian Monks?"

"That's one way to put it. I think of it more like, the Monks created an archive of everything we need for advanced love charms, and as long as we're artful and earnest and respectful of their original spirit, we can take and use what we want. And it looks like we can add to it too. For instance, most of the Monks' animal familiars were doves, but instead of hunting down a dove and squeezing the poor thing to make it irate enough to peck your arm, I had Crookshanks fill in with his claw. But it seems to have worked anyway."

"Probably worked a damn sight better."

She turned from the book to smile at him. "I think so."

He had just begun to bend to kiss her when she jerked her head back to her reading. "So it's hard to say which of these spells I used, since I used all of them. And that means it's also difficult to work out what the lasting effects of my version of Mitrian love charm inscriptions may be."

Draco remembered something. "Yours is different, I know it," he said. "When - when he thought he was removing mine, he made some comment about how badly it must have hurt when it was inscribed. Only it didn't hurt. Maybe he wasn't just gloating when he said it. Maybe he was testing to see what kind of charm it was before going any further so he'd know how to handle it. And maybe because I said it didn't hurt, he handled it wrong."

She hummed. "The book does say something about pain. I'll read it again."

His mind was working, and he was all questions now. "What does the book say about consequences for wizards who try to vanquish charms like these? Is there anything about what kind of damage someone could sustain if they attacked a charm?"

Hermione was frowning. "That's harder to make out than I'd hoped. Look at the manuscript, Draco, it's not just fancy calligraphy, it's written in runes. I've been learning runes, but reading them is slow going, and nerve-wracking without a professor to check my work."

"You can do it. You should probably be the one checking your professor's work." By now, Draco had mastered paying her compliments.

She nodded. "Thank you. I do think I can get it well enough. But it won't be easy. Even when I can read the runes, I still don't always know what they're about just because they're so old and strange. Look here: this one says the charm will have certain properties only if cast while the constellation Heibeles is in retrograde."

Draco frowned deeper than ever. "Heibeles? There's no such constellation."

"No, it's a cypher. We find them all the time in medieval writing. The name Heibeles is hiding the name of a real constellation, on purpose, so that only a worthy Monk will know which it is."

Draco swore. "Well, you just worry about decoding the original manuscript. Leave the cyphers to me. I can research that without reading runes. And I'll start studying runes on the side, anyways. I'll catch up." He opened his book bag, looking for parchment and a quill to start making notes on the cyphers.

Hermione hopped and threw both her arms around his neck, kissing him on the mouth. He hadn't expected it and scrambled to hold her with his hands still full of stationery. Clumsy and flailing, he opened to her kiss anyway, closing his eyes completely to the restricted section and its entrance.

"Thank you," she said again, breaking away, his arms still around her. "I've never worked with anyone who didn't just stand by with his hands in his pockets waiting for me to do all the book work myself. Harry came back here once, had one book scream in his face, and bolted. Didn't come back until the Triwizard Tournament and hasn't been seen in here since."

Draco gathered her closer. "Prats."

"Yes, they are. Thank goodness you're all prats in your own different ways."


	8. Chapter 8

Ron Weasley and Pansy Parkinson were late for class - very late. Still, they were barely rushing as they stepped back into the Entrance Hall, their hair windblown and their clothing disheveled from flying.

"I mean, growing up in a family full of blokes, we never saw much figure flying," Ron was saying. "So I guess I never put it together, how figure flyers are constantly posing and waving their arms about while staying in perfect control of their broomsticks. Marvelous, really. And it's all in the thighs and hips, you say?"

"Where else would it be?" Pansy was laughing.

"I don't know, some special girl ability."

"For the love of stars, Weasley. Don't make it about sex."

"I never said sex," he was sputtering.

"Sex as in male versus female, not sex as in - oh, do shut up." She punched him in the arm, laughing.

"Sorry, sorry." He blushed, accepting the punching. "So instead of all the head saves, I need to work on lower body strength and control, then I can let go and use my hands more."

He stopped, a little stunned as he looked around the deserted corridors and staircases adjacent to the Entrance Hall. "Blimey, Parkinson, where is everyone?"

She swore. "What time is it?"

"I dunno. Hermione's the one with the watch so I never…"

She swore again. "We've been skiving off this whole time."

"Well, not for the first hour."

"Quick, Weasley, and we might make it to the last bit of herbology." She snatched his hand and towed him along as she ran back outside, toward the greenhouses.

They burst through the steaming glass doors to find a very surprised, very interrupted Professor Sprout lecturing a class of first years. Not only had they missed all of herbology, they were now late for charms.

Ron took in the scene in the greenhouse first, grabbed Pansy's hand, and ran back toward the castle before Professor Sprout could begin to question them. Inside, they tore through the corridors and up to the third floor. Whatever lower body strength Ron may have been lacking for broomstick control, he was still running powerfully enough to be dragging Pansy behind him by the time they came tumbling through the door of Professor Flitwick's classroom.

No one failed to turn to look at them. Malfoy jumped up from his desk and barely held himself back from running at them in relief. Doubled over, panting, Pansy couldn't lift her head to notice, but she did wrench her sweaty hand out of Ron's when the class began to titter and whisper.

Flitwick was waving them inside, calling for everyone's attention. To avoid a walk of shameful tardiness, they slumped into the empty table at the back of the classroom. Pansy lifted her fringe and fanned herself with a notebook, her makeup running down her neck. Ron's face was red and slick, and for a moment, she turned her fanning on him.

What was left of the class passed quickly, and they were soon sitting in the back of the room alone as Flitwick tidied up his notes at the front. He hadn't said anything about a detention but they anticipated one from him and from Sprout in due time.

"Well, there goes Malfoy," Ron said, watching the back of a haughty blond head disappear into the corridor. "Looks like he has no notion of relieving me of guard duty."

Exasperated, Pansy sighed. "This is all bloody ridiculous. I don't need to be guarded by some boy who can't wait to be relieved."

"No, no, no," Ron was sputtering again. "I don't mean relieved - wrong word. I said this morning I'd be happy to do this and I still am. So where do you want to go now? Anywhere on the school grounds and I'm your mate."

She slid off her stool. "Just walk me back to my common room. There will be lots of people there, even if they're all still pretending not to notice me. Drop me there and then you can go." Her tone was more sad than spiteful, and he hated it.

"I will if you want to, but don't slink off home because you think I'm not having any fun. I am. Best afternoon so far this year."

At the front of the room, the door to Flitwick's office clicked shut.

Pansy looked into Ron's face. "You'd hate me, wouldn't you?"

He frowned. "What'd you mean?"

She looked at her feet, her dark eyelashes sweeping her cheeks. "If I told anyone that - the thing they found, at Draco's - that it was made by Granger - and it got her into trouble, in danger, you'd hate me for that, wouldn't you?"

Ron let out his breath. "It would be a rotten thing for you to do to anyone, not just to Hermione."

"I hate her," Pansy said, almost in a whisper.

"You think I don't hate Malfoy?" Ron countered. "But it doesn't matter. I still wouldn't send him off to his enemies just to satisfy my own bad feelings. That's as deep as my powers of forgiveness and compassion go, though. Honestly, it's amazing how Hermione gets past everything and likes him anyway - "

Pansy snorted. "No, it's not."

"Yeah, it is."

"You wouldn't say that if Draco had ever kissed you. He's rather - "

Ron retched. "Spare me, Parkinson."

"Draco and I were each other's first kiss, you know. Cut our teeth on each other - literally."

Ron groaned into his hands. "Will you please shut up about it?"

She did. Instead of saying anything else, Pansy stepped toward where Ron still sat on his stool, and when he brought his face out of his hands, her face was close to his, about the same height when he was sitting. He hardly knew she was there before she was kissing him, with no lipstick, no teeth, no plans, right on the mouth. It was not long, not hard, not too wet, but it was a proper, unmistakable kiss, their first since the Yule Ball.

"As I remembered," she said, leaning away. "Raw potential."

Ron's jaw worked as if he felt he should speak, his face red again, his heart beating in his throat, but he could make no answer.

"I won't grass her up," Pansy said, turning away, sliding her arms into the straps of her book bag. "Granger, that is. I wouldn't do it just for her, or, if he were to ask me today, not even for Draco. But for a decent bloke like yourself, Weasley, on a day like today - I'd do it for you."

* * *

The library's restricted section looked more like Hermione Granger's private office. The table in its centre was covered in books on magical skin inscriptions and tattoos, love charms, protection charms, animal familiars, tenth century magical schools of thought, Mitrian Monks, and several dictionaries and grammar guides to ancient runes. Her pile was drifting into Draco's collection of books on medieval cyphers, constellations, obscure magical Greek mythology and mystery pantheons, and beginners' runes.

They worked so quietly and for so long that Madam Pince finally arrived, peering through the gap over the rope, to make sure they were actually working. When she caught them doing nothing but reading and jotting notes, Draco was almost offended. He dragged his chair closer to Hermione's letting it scrape noisily across the floor as Pince left.

"Don't sulk, Malfoy," Hermione scolded him. "I happen to know you were thoroughly snogged in a seventh floor corridor right after classes today."

"Who's sulking? I just wanted to check on your progress."

"Well then look at this," she began. "It's Ethelfred's Hierarchy of Animal Familiars. It says all of the most powerful ones are birds, like the Monks' doves, not mammals like Crookshanks."

"Rubbish."

"Yes exactly, and it's contrary to Muggle ideas of animal taxonomy, by the way. But look, the Hierarchy itself admits an exception." She turned a thick, massive page. "And that is for animal familiars, whatever their class, which are magical creatures like, say, Dumbledore's phoenix - "

"Or a giant cursed serpent - "

"Or," she said with unmasked pride, "a cat who is half kneazle. Any of these is more powerful than a non-magical creature. So spells that involve them will be more potent than those done with a standard familiar. And that means, whatever the Mitrian Monks could do with their doves, we can expect our effect to be stronger because we used a kneazle half-breed. Take that, blood purity."

She punctuated it with a kiss smacked loudly against Draco's cheek. The "mwah!" resounded through the library, startling both of them and sending them flying apart, watching for Madam Pince to reappear.

"Can you imagine," Hermione whispered, after a few more minutes of quiet work, "dating normally, like Ginny and Dean? Strolling around hand in hand, taking meals together, cuddling in the streets of Hogsmeade - "

"Your best friend not stalking me."

"Your dad not sending thugs chasing after me."

He turned toward her again, pulling her chair closer and tipping his forehead against her temple. "I'm sorry, love."

"Oh, I didn't mean for you to - "

"I'm sorry that normal is impossible."

She cupped his face in her hands, and kissed it again, quietly and softly. "We don't know that yet. Don't lose hope."

He let out a ragged breath, backing away from her cradling hands. "We're running out of time. The next time he calls me in to strip me half naked and question me while my mother sits and cries, he's going to demand some sign of my service to him."

She took his hands in hers. "Stay calm, Draco. We found promising news in just a few hours of research today. There's still a good chance we'll find something more in all of this," she waved at the mass of books, "and in this," she squeezed his twice-marked arm through his sleeve.

Draco was raised a spoiled child, a boy no one had ever taught to wait or to show any patience or restraint. It meant he was prone to worry and frustration, to rash action. "I'm trying to believe in this," he said. "I'll keep on trying. For now, I've got to kiss you goodbye," he said, clearing her hair away from her face in preparation. "I have to report to detention with McGonagall at 4:30."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "What did you do to her?"

He tucked the last of her wayward hair behind her ear. "Nothing, it's just with all my - issues at home, I've fallen a bit behind on my transfigurations essays. So she's forcing me to get caught up in detention. I've got one today and one on the weekend."

"On the weekend? Then you won't be coming to Hogsmeade."

"No great loss," he shrugged. "Weather's going to be awful anyway."

"Is it?"

"Mmhm, shouldn't have quit divination, Granger," he said as he leaned in and made good on his promise to kiss her.

Detention with McGonagall ended as the dinner hour began, but instead of going downstairs to the Great Hall, Draco went up, to the Room of Hidden Things. He stood in front of the vanishing cabinet, and cracked its door open without removing its dusty cloth cover. Behind the door was where he kept the parchment with Borgin's repair instructions on it, and his half of a pair of galleons enchanted with a protean charm. His mother had given the galleon to him just before Snape came to take him back to Hogwarts. She said its mate was held by a contact in Hogsmeade that he could trust to do their bidding without question or complaint. He wasn't sure who it was, or why they were helping him, but he would soon be desperate for that help. The cursed necklace would arrive from Borgin and Burkes by the end of the week, and it would need someone other than himself to carry it to Dumbledore.

* * *

Hermione sat with Harry and Ron in the Gryffindor common room after dinner. Harry lay sprawled in an armchair, trying to relax as he watched the Map. "Where's Malfoy, Hermione? He's not on the Map."

Behind her book, she frowned. "Look harder. He'll have just had detention with McGonagall."

"Nowhere near her."

"Library? Restricted Section? It's unplottable isn't it?"

"No. Try again."

She was peeved enough to drop her book. "I don't know, Harry. Snape takes him home to see his mum quite a lot ever since…"

Unsatisfied, Harry crammed the Map back into his robes. Hermione retreated back behind her book. If Harry were to ask her again if she knew whether Draco had been marked, she wasn't sure what she'd say now. It was rather sickening and heightened the urgency of her research.

For now, she threw Ron between them. "Haven't seen much of you today, Ronald."

Harry smirked. "Not since he returned from skiving off with Parkinson."

She laughed. "Did you really? How did that come about?"

Ron groaned. "Don't ask me. It was Malfoy's idea for me to keep an eye on her during class, since the Slytherins are useless. So I did, but then it all went pear-shaped."

Harry was blinking furiously behind his glasses. "Malfoy?"

"Don't start, Harry." Ron seemed too exhausted to explain and looked to Hermione. "It's about that thing, Hermione. That thing Malfoy's mum found - some charm."

"Muffliato," she chirped.

"Oh, muffliato, is it?" said Harry. "All of a sudden, you're not too good for the Half-blood Prince's muffliato spell?"

"Are you interested or not?" Ron interrupted. The room was emptying, as it usually did when someone cast a muffliato spell. No one liked the fuzzy feeling in their ears. "Right. So, Malfoy's mum finds this love charm Hermione made him, but she assumes it's from Parkinson, like any reasonable person would. Then the Death Eaters see it and it gets them riled up, for some reason, and now Malfoy's afraid they might haul Parkinson off to question her about it. And even if you don't care about that, it gets more interesting when she tells Malfoy, right to his face, that she'd grass Hermione up soon as look at her - "

Hermione made a loud scoffing sound.

" - so I spent the day defusing that for him while he - oh, who cares," Ron finished.

Harry cared, and he leapt to questioning. "What kind of teenaged love charm gets the Death Eaters up in arms? And if it was so dangerous, why didn't Malfoy take care of it himself? And what do you mean defuse, Ron? Is Parkinson still out to snitch on Hermione or not?"

The only question Ron could hear was the last one. "No, she's not. She promised me she'd say nothing to any Death Eaters about Hermione."

Hermione frowned. "How did you get her to agree to that, Ronald?"

He shook his head. "I didn't get her to do anything. She just offered. She just stepped forward, all on her own and said it - after she kissed me."

Harry was shaking his head now. "That bloody Yule Ball."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: I was sick in bed all day and got this entire chapter written. Sorry to spam you with updates. Thanks for the reviews. So helpful and motivating!**

Just as Draco had divined, on the day of the first Hogsmeade trip of their sixth year, the weather was terrible, wind and sleet. Warm and dry, he sat in McGonagall's office, a half-inked parchment on the desk in front of him, as he watched the grey gap of the window, flying beads of ice hurling itself against the glass.

McGonagall herself said nothing about his distracted watching of the window, interpreting his lack of focus on his essay as a simple, wistful preference to be in town, strutting through the streets with his cronies, ogling Hermione Granger or glaring at Harry Potter from across a barroom, over the top of a stein of butterbeer. That was how she knew Draco Malfoy to enjoy passing his time.

In fact, he was relieved to be under McGonagall's eye, no better alibi to show he wasn't responsible for what he knew was making its way down the lane from Hogsmeade. He had received an owl informing him that the cursed necklace had arrived in the post office nest from Borgin and Burke's shop. He had pressed his charmed galleon to signal the contact his mother had established in town to collect it and get it to a Hogwarts student.

At any time now, at the front gate, Filch would detect the dangerous package with his Secrecy Sensor and it would be confiscated and turned over to the headmaster who, already alerted by Filch of its suspicious nature, would know to handle it and dispose of it safely.

And it would all be recorded in the Dark Lord's ledger as service by the Malfoy family, foiled by the same Hogwarts security measures that were holding the Dark Lord himself at bay. Who could be blamed for that?

This was Draco's own plan to distract and delay the Death Eaters. If nothing changed. it should be perfect - or at least, sufficient. But within it, there was much Draco didn't know and couldn't control. Who had his mother found in Hogsmeade to help them? Why were they doing it? Who were they going to choose from among his classmates to be the courier? It could be anyone at all. And how were they going to be convinced to cooperate? All of the Death Eaters knew the Imperius curse. It was one of the things they'd taught him this summer. Did his mother know it too?

He looked at his parchment. He'd put off this essay for so long to deliberately trigger this detention that it seemed completely unwritable now. Exhausted from worry, his head drooped toward the desktop. It was a move McGonagall was primed to spot and she was raising her eyes, opening her mouth to reprimand him when she seemed to hear something from faraway in the quiet, empty castle that made her pause.

Someone was shrieking.

McGonagall was on her feet and sailing toward the door. "Mr. Malfoy, you may go."

He was alone in her office. It wouldn't do to chase after her, so he crossed the floor to the window. Whatever the ruckus was, it wasn't visible from her view overlooking the quidditch pitch.

Creeping toward the Entrance Hall, Draco dodged to hide himself as a new rush of noise and voices came through the door. McGonagall was speaking loudly and quickly over the high sobbing of a girl, directing her and maybe some other people into her office before slamming the door behind them.

As she did so, everything fell suddenly still. Maybe he just imagined it, but in the quiet, Draco could almost hear someone still screaming from the hospital wing.

He needed to know what happened - if it had anything to do with the delivery of the necklace. He was stepping out of hiding to find Snape and see what he could learn from him when Filch appeared, stomping the slush from his boots, pinching a knotted scarf between two large, knobby fingers and setting off not after McGonagall, but in the direction of Snape's office.

There was no one he could go to, and nothing to do but the thing Draco was very worst at: waiting.

* * *

Harry was wrong about Malfoy hexing Katie Bell with the cursed necklace from Borgin and Burkes. Hermione knew he was. Everyone agreed - Ron, McGonagall - they both had excellent reasons to agree with her, grounded in logic and alibis. Harry, on the other hand, was still grieving Sirius Black's death at the hands of the adults of Draco's family. It made sense that Harry had developed this fixation on Draco as another Black-Malfoy villain. It was tragic but based in emotion, not evidence.

Whatever it was, she couldn't listen to another word of it. It wore her down. Instead of staying in the common room with Ron and Harry, she went to her room and fell on her bed next to Crookshanks.

This term, Crookshanks had been no help in putting her mind at ease about Draco's powers to resist corruption by the Death Eaters either. She waited as he stretched, clawing at her quilt before she asked, "He didn't hurt Katie today, did he?"

Crookshanks knew who she meant. In answer he simply blinked his gold eyes and trilled as he bumped his head against her hand. She scratched his ears and looked up at her canopy. She'd already done some excellent thinking through the problem as she and Ron and McGonagall herself argued through each of Harry's accusations.

What wouldn't fall into line were her feelings. The only time she felt completely sure that Draco had the strength to keep up his silent, secret defenses against the Dark Lord was when they were together, when her hands were on his skin and his voice was in her ears.

She needed to see him, and so did Crookshanks. She slipped down the stairs and out the portrait hole, her arms full of lazy, orange fuzz. She set off walking, up to the seventh floor. It was her first time coming to this spot by the troll tapestry since Draco had burst through the wall with the rest of the Inquisitorial squad to attack the DA in fifth year.

She cleared her dry throat and spoke into the empty hall. "I need to meet Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."

The stones ground against each other, realigning, revealing a doorway. She stepped through and found not the Room of Requirement she remembered - a gymnasium-like space for practicing dueling and spells - but a room crammed full of broken and abandoned objects of every kind. It was the Room of Hidden things, dusty and dank, haphazard and haunted. And sitting on a rug at the foot of a mound of broken woodwork and furniture, was Draco, staring at a coin he turned over and over again in his fingers.

Crookshanks bent and twisted in her arms but she held onto him.

Draco's head snapped up and he pocketed the coin when she called his name. "Hermione! How did you find this place?" he began.

"It's the Room of Hidden Things, isn't it?" she said, her voice slow and sad. "And you're hiding here."

He pointed at her middle. "You've brought the cat?"

She nodded, dipping her head low enough to hide her eyes in Crookshanks's coat for a moment before she went on. "Yes. He's proven himself in the past to be able to detect when people are untrustworthy. And all term, I've been ignoring it. But I think it may be why - why he doesn't - any longer…"

Draco stepped toward her but the cat in her arms kept him at a distance. "What happened in Hogsmeade today, Hermione? McGonagall threw me out and there was all that commotion and screaming and I have to know."

She sniffed, took a huge breath, and repeated Leanne's story about Katie Bell in the Three Broomsticks. She told the rest from her own point of view, as someone traumatized by watching a classmate hexed almost to death.

Draco sank back onto the rug, his head between his knees. "What was the necklace wrapped in, that it all came apart with a little bad weather?"

It was not the response Hermione had expected. She knelt beside him, still clinging to Crookshanks as the cat tested her, writhing irregularly in her grasp.

"It was supposed to stay inside the wrapping. No one was supposed to touch it. No one was supposed to get hurt," he said.

Her eyes were wide, shocked with questions, but not daring to interrupt him.

"Katie," he said. "I played quidditch against her for four years. Katie - it could have been anyone. Oh my god, Hermione, it could have been you."

He was sobbing into his hands, confessing and suffering. Her hands prickled with the urge to reach out for him. It was like an electrical current beneath her fingerprints. But if she let go of Crookshanks, he might bolt and become lost in here too. It smelled like other animals had met a similar fate. Finally, Crookshanks resolved the dilemma for her, twisting with a mighty meow, breaking free and bolting into the debris.

Her arms now empty, she lunged toward Draco, taking his head in her hands and raising it to look at her.

"Tell me everything."

He did tell her everything about the necklace plot. She already knew where he got it and from there he told her everything he knew about what Borgin, his mother, the unknown contact in town, and he had done to bring it about. He told her through tears and groans as she held him.

"I even knew the weather wasn't going to be good today. I taunted you about it in the library," he said. "It's all my fault."

It was, and she didn't contradict him. What she did say was, "Speaking from my own experience, things never go as planned. That's one of the thousands of reasons why experimenting with dark magic is so dangerous." It was the kind of thing his parents ought to have taught him, and hadn't.

Draco had unburdened himself thoroughly enough to feel a bump against his elbow. Crookshanks had come back and was rubbing his chin along Draco's upper right arm, on his clothes that had been too long without the scent of his favourite cat. Draco sobbed in relief at the sight of him, but when he reached out a hand to gather the cat up and cuddle it between himself and Hermione, it darted away.

Hermione pressed her palms against Draco's cheeks again. "Wait for me," she said. "Trust in me. Don't go off on your own like this anymore. Remember that you don't belong to the Dark Lord. You belong to me."

He was still shaking and miserable. A part of her was glad of it. Another part was desperate to restore him, to bring him back from being a miserable, beaten Death Eater child soldier, to being her beautiful lovestruck boy once more, the one who taught her to waltz and to kiss.

She pushed his cardigan off his shoulders. He wore a grey T-shirt underneath - the first time she'd seen him in short sleeves for months. His marked arm was between them, still shocking to see. She closed her eyes, gathered her strongest magical intent and bent to kiss it. As she backed away, in the dim grey late afternoon light, fragments of blue flashed beneath his skin.

"Ask me to show you," she said. "Whenever you're overcome and desperate and about to do something dangerous and stupid, find me. Ask me to show you this. It's what you really are."

He watched with her as the blue light faded away, catching her face as she bent to kiss the token again, raising her chin on the ends of two of his fingers to kiss his mouth instead. His lips were still swollen from crying as he pushed them against hers. She felt the difference and answered curiously with her own lips, almost like a first kiss, but nearly two years after their first kiss.

Maybe it was mostly because her emotions were so tangled and painful that afternoon that Hermione pushed herself out into the current of her physical sensations, drifting. Draco's mouth was firmer and hotter than usual. All of him seemed bigger as he leaned toward her. Without much force he was coming closer, his body taking the space hers had filled, moving her backward, descending toward the rug.

His chest was on top of hers, and then the rest of him was on her too. The old discarded rug wasn't plush enough to cushion her from the stone floor beneath. His weight crushed her against the stone and she gasped for breath beneath him. He understood and rolled, using his arms and momentum to keep her pressed to him, bringing her to lay on top of him. All the while, he kissed her as they moved, and she responded with her own lips and tongue, inhaling his scent, her pulse high and fast.

On top of him, her knees fell to either side of his body. She was short enough that when connected to him at the mouth, without stretching her neck, she straddled him across his waist, not his hips. For the first time, she was conscious of how the crux of her body must feel against his stomach in this position. She shifted on her knees, perhaps testing him a little, and as if on cue, his breath shuddered.

Draco's hands kneaded her back through her shirt. The curves of her shoulders were perfect fits for the palms of his hands. They always had been. As he had grown and changed, she had too. Yes, she was a woman now. As a girl or a woman, there was no form in which he felt like he deserved her but here she was, even today, after what he'd done, her body on top of him, her spell underneath his skin, and still not nearly close enough.

His hands moved in unison, curving from her shoulders to her waist. He'd slid them beneath the hem of her shirts before, touched the smooth, warm skin above her waistband. He placed his hands there again, his fingertips finding the groove of her spine, tracing along its arching line, higher. Her breath caught and he trailed his finger tips down again as she exhaled. When he stroked the skin of her back again, it was with open hands, fingers splayed to touch more of her at once, the tentative tickle now more sure, even demanding.

She felt her own heartbeat as if every part of her body was now a pulse point. Inside the back of her shirt, Draco's movements were slow and gentle as always but beginning to range into new territory. His hand slid beneath the strap of her bra for a moment before sliding back out again, and on his downward stroke, his fingers grazed the skin just underneath her waistband.

She tore her mouth away from his. "Draco!"

"Sorry - I'm sorry." His hands were on top of her shirt again. "Sorry. What is it?"

"You just reminded me," she said, pushing herself upright, bracing him with her knees to keep her balance, her hands on his chest, over his still-pounding heart. "I rediscovered something I forgot about in the Mitrian Monks manuscript. I've been meaning to tell you all day."

He lay motionless, still in no condition to sit up and shift her into his lap. He swallowed hard to say, "Great. What is it?"

She cleared the huskiness out of her voice. "The monks say the charm is only effective for pure love."

He dropped his arm over his eyes. "That's nice. And since my charm still shows, I guess we're pure enough, yeah?"

"That's just it," she said, swinging her knees back together and moving to kneel beside him. "We have been pure. But - I mean - we have to stay that way."

He raised himself to sit beside her, pulling up his knees, reaching for his cardigan but then leaving it when he found that Crookshanks had curled up in it. "Yeah, like I said. Looks as if we're doing fairly well. I love you with a beautiful redeeming purity."

"Right, but the Monks," she continued, all business when it came to her research, "the monks would have had primitive, medieval ideas about pure love. It would have had nothing to do with breeding or feelings or intentions and everything to do with literal, physical - um - chastity."

Draco's head fell forward, onto his knees. "Chastity?"

"Yes," she said. "I cross-referenced the use of the word 'pure' within the manuscript to make sure and - yes. The love charm's strength depends on us being either virgins or husband and wife."

"Virgins?"

"Or married."

Draco was wrenching his signet ring off his finger. "Right. Fine. Put this ring on, Granger - I mean, Madam Malfoy. We'll get married. People marry too young on the verge of war all the time. It's a British tradition. Give that finger here."

She was laughing at him as he tried to catch her left hand to put his ring on it. "Draco Malfoy, you are ridiculous. And you're still sixteen. You can't get married without a certificate of your parents' consent and I think we can be certain that is not forthcoming."

Both of her hands were hidden behind her back, which meant they were soon in full contact again as Draco tackled her back onto the rug and grappled for her ring finger. "Come now, Madam Malfoy. I'd wager it's not like you've never conjured fake documents before."

"Even so, is it a pure thing to do?" she was laughing as they tussled. "Why are you like this? It's not as if we've started doing it yet so - "

"Hermione," he said, drawing her name out, not trying to disguise his voice as anything but pleading. "'Yet' is the keyword, isn't it? In a long relationship, a man has certain hopes - "

"You're not a man, not legally."

"Exactly, and if the Dark Lord murders me before my seventeenth birthday - and he probably will - then I'll die a virgin. Me!"

"He is not going to be able to kill you," Hermione said, her hands no longer hiding but flying up to pull his forehead to hers. He slid his enormous black ring onto her tiny finger as she spoke. "Listen to me. The magic in that ancient love charm is going to get us out of this, somehow. Stop rushing ahead and making horrible messes and wait for me, trust me. If you've learned anything at all from the truly horrifying events of today, Draco, learn that."

He sat up, hazarding a glance at the tall, thin vanishing cabinet standing almost at his feet. Crookshanks sprang to life, kicking Draco's cardigan aside with his hind legs. And Hermione kissed Draco's face once more as she jammed his Malfoy family signet ring back onto his finger.


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: Had to edit to add a note to say how much I appreciate the reviewers, especially the regular ones. You are the best! Love, love.**

Professor Snape crunched over the gravel outside Malfoy Manor, striding, in spite of the sleet, toward its black doors. He scanned the garden for signs of Draco and didn't see him anywhere. Relieved, he parted the doors to find Narcissa Malfoy seated near the foot of a grand staircase, rising from the piano she had not been playing to meet him.

"Severus, at last. Have you brought something for the Dark Lord's ailment? He hides his discomfort well, but - "

"He is not ill," Snape interrupted. "His is merely annoyed, and the less said of it, the better for all of our sakes."

"Of course," she nodded. "And Draco," she called after him, "have you seen him this evening? Is he quite alright?"

Snape indulged in a sneer. "Yes. Despite the tragic events played out on the road from Hogsmeade today, Draco is safe. And it is no thanks to you and your idiotic accomplice."

"Severus, I've done everything I can - "

"And the results have been disastrous notwithstanding," he hissed. "Desist, Madam, and allow me to fulfill my promises without interference."

In a swirl of black robes he moved along the hall, pushing past Wormtail lurking in the doorway of the drawing room. Snape bent to his knees beside the Dark Lord's chair.

"Leave us," his master growled, and the room emptied to just Snape and himself.

The Dark Lord snarled as he quenched the firelight to near darkness. "The instant Lucius Malfoy was arrested, we should have killed his woman and his boy. There is nothing to be gained from this ridiculous delay, and much to be risked."

He extended his palm to Snape, who dabbed it with the thick yellow balm he had prepared. "It's still not too late to do it, Severus. The boy is marked. I could summon him now and have him and his mother and any lovesick witch who'd like to die beside them slaughtered and hanged over this hearth before morning."

"It would be satisfying," Snape agreed, "particularly after today's events. However, as the boy's headmaster himself has acknowledged, a young operative within the castle is a great weapon. May I suggest that the value of this weapon may yet be realized?"

The Dark Lord huffed. "That school has taught you patience, perhaps to a fault. But tell me, Severus, do you believe that even after a thousand years, a child of Lucius Malfoy's could succeed in a mission of any significance? Or is this boy doomed to share his father's talent for exposing and endangering our designs?"

"To be sure," Snape continued, "the debacle with the girl in Hogsmeade today is regrettable. But it does raise the pitch of fear and shows the boy has a certain ingenuity and enthusiasm for our work. If I may say, my lord, I am no Lucius Malfoy. Give me time to teach the boy properly, to tame him before we decide whether to dispose of him."

The Dark Lord grumbled as he withdrew his hand, slick and fragrant with the balm. It penetrated and numbed the magic in his hand - his own and the witch's.

"Further," Snape continued, "the death of the charm bearer might worsen the present difficulties with your wand hand. We require the charm caster first."

"And where was Miss Parkinson during this outing?" the Dark Lord snapped. "The failure to collect her in Hogsmeade is another one of today's disappointments."

Snape's face was obscured by his hair as he bent to repack his satchel. "She was complaining of a head cold and not given leave for traveling in the inclement weather by our mediwitch."

"A head cold? You couldn't heal her and send her off?"

"I was not consulted, my lord."

He swore. "Bloody coddling school." He rubbed at his palm. "Young Malfoy's love charm, it was activated today, late in the afternoon. The witch who cast it - Parkinson or whoever it may be - she called it forth. This was for the second time since I marked him. I sensed it."

Snape leaned closer, over the arm of the chair. "By what sensations did you know it?"

There was a moment of silence, as the Dark Lord considered his servant's trustworthiness. "By a sense of fire, and of madness."

Snape fell ever so slightly backward.

"It is an unforeseen effect of my own success," the Dark Lord went on. "In perfecting the power to fragment and preserve my soul, creating the horcruxes this headmaster pursues at this very moment, my soul developed an affinity for magical elements outside of itself. Just as my magic sticks to other's, the magic of others appears to stick to me. This childish love charm would never have touched me were it not for that. Now that I know this, future attachments can be prevented. This one, however, remains to be cut away."

Snape's lips quivered as he asked, "Surely, the girl's charm grows weaker, surrounded as it is within your own far superior magic."

There was another pause, cold and terrific.

"It does not."

As the Dark Lord spoke, the fire in the hearth crackled higher, greener, roaring. "Tell no one. And take the girl."

* * *

Ron stood in the dungeon corridor, opposite the wall where the door to the Slytherin common room should be visible, but wasn't. Quaffles are not known to bounce but he was throwing one against the stonework forcefully enough for it to fly back at him, over and over again. He hadn't been at it long before the door materialized, open and framing a bunch of irate Slytherins howling about the racket.

"Go get Parkinson then," he bawled at them, still hurling the quaffle.

"Stop, stop, stop," she said, shuffling into the corridor in slippers and a dressing gown. "Stop barraging our home, Weasley, or they'll all be shunning me again."

"Serves them right for not having a proper door to knock at, or a bell to ring," he said, tucking the quaffle under his arm.

She pulled the door closed behind her. "Tell it to Salazar Slytherin a thousand years ago."

"How are you feeling?" he asked. "Any better? You've rubbed your nose red."

"Like you care," she said, folding her arms. "I know for a fact this cold wasn't brought on by any virus. Either you or Malfoy have hexed me with it to keep me inside the castle and out of Hogsmeade today."

"That's quite the conclusion to jump to," Ron deflected. "Common colds are - common enough, aren't they? There's no way to say anything besides a virus is to blame."

She swatted his arm and lowered her voice. "I know it's not viral because if it was, you'd have it too, wouldn't you Weasley?" She stepped closer to him. "In fact, if it is indeed a virus, I could still pass it to you right now."

His throat bobbed as she tilted her face upwards.

"Lozenges," he croaked, pulling a crumpled paper bag from his jacket. "I've brought you lozenges from town. They're so effective, Fred and George haven't even bothered to formulate a reversal for their Fever Fudge. They just rebrand these. Here, get one down ya."

She snatched the bag from him. "I will not thank you for these."

He stood up taller. "And I will not apologize for your cold. Did you hear what happened on our way back? What we saw?"

She left off unwrapping her first lozenge. "With Katie Bell? You were there too?"

Ron made a scoffing sound. "Of course we were there. We're always there."

"It wasn't Draco, you know," she hurried to say. "He was in detention."

"I know. We had to go over all of that with Harry. I don't think the curse was meant for Katie either. Sounds more like she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone took advantage of her. I hate to think what - well anyways, it's lucky you were safe in here all day." He was so sincere he petted the top of her sleek, dark hair, as if she was a slightly dangerous cat.

She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "You're not saying the curse was meant for me, are you?"

He shrugged as he dropped his hand from her head. "I dunno. But why else use a necklace if not to trap a girl trained up to like sparkly things? But it was badly done - exactly the kind of mess we've come to expect from Death Eaters. Unless they picked that necklace because they were crafty enough to figure out that a girl making love charms for Malfoy is bound to have awful taste."

She smirked, blinking up at his face. "You've windburned your cheeks out in the weather today. They're red."

He swallowed again. "Ginger life." He stepped closer, almost whispering. "I hate to say it, but Malfoy is right. Stay in the castle, Parkinson. And start thinking of some excuse to stay over Christmas. I will too. We'll keep each other company."

Her cheeks flushed but she said, "Weasley, I can't just hide here until the Death Eaters go away. They are not going away. This must be dealt with in a way other than shutting me up, like a princess in a Muggle fairy tale."

He sighed. "Yeah, there's no hope of shutting you up."

She punched his arm.

"That's - ow - Parkinson, that's not what I meant!"

"Whatever you meant, get out of here." She shoved him toward the stairs with both hands. "Go back to your tower and let me sleep off the rest of this cold hex."

"Wait, just let me take one lozenge, yeah? In case I do end up catching something from you."

She dug one out of the bag for him. "You're welcome to have one but it's been days since - it happened, and if you don't have a cold by now - "

She looked up from the bag to find his neck bent low enough for his face to be close, his breath on her nose and mouth. Her nose was already clear enough to be able to tell he smelled like sweets and the dried sleet and rainwater still clinging to his hair from walking outside all day. She closed her eyes as she inhaled - and then there were voices behind him, loud in the stairwell.

He straightened up quickly, plucking the lozenge from her fingers, and turning away.

She slumped against the wall, rough stones snagging on the fluffy loops of her dressing gown, and watched him go. He moved differently than Draco, not with the lithe almost weightless movements of a quidditch seeker but with the powerful, bracing force of a keeper. She saw it as the Slytherin third years coming down the stairs the same time he was going up threw themselves out of his way. He wasn't massive like Crabbe and Goyle but he was a force of nature all the same.

She pressed her forehead to the wall, asking herself, "What the hell, Parkinson?"

* * *

It was nearly curfew when Draco reported to Professor Snape's office, as ordered. Nervous and guarded, he approached the door, yet he was still unprepared when Snape spun around in front of his desk as soon as Draco pulled the door closed and spoke a single word almost too fast to be understood.

"Legilimens."

Draco scrambled to raise the mental turbulence he needed to blur all his thoughts into noise, but there was no time. Snape was with him already, in his head, his memories - on the silky skin over Hermione's spine, then recoiling, drawing back far enough to see her unmistakable head of hair bent over Draco's marked arm, as she kissed the love charm to life, its lines glowing blue through the gloom of the afternoon in the Room of Hidden Things.

Draco barked out an anguished yell. It sounded within his mind as well as his throat, thrusting Snape out, sending him staggering against the edge of his desk, lips parted and angry.

But the damage was done. "As I thought," Snape said, righting himself. He lunged to take Draco by the wrist. "Show me."

There was no point lying to him about it now. "I can't show you. Only - she can do it."

"And you'd better tell her not to," Snape hissed, throwing Draco's wrist back at him. "Every time this charm is activated it draws the Dark Lord's attention and his ire."

Draco gaped. "It does?"

"It does. And in so doing, it puts all of you in a very dangerous position. It must be stopped. Do not trouble the Dark Lord any further - not with your ludicrous half-cocked assassination attempts and not with your childish love games."

Draco didn't seem to be listening, standing as if stunned, gripping his left forearm with his right hand through the sleeve of his cardigan still covered in cat hair.

Snape spoke into his ear. "Take me as your advisor. I know your mission and I can help you succeed. I swore to your mother with your aunt as witness that I would protect you in this. Let us save you from yourself."

Draco's mind and feelings were reeling. If anyone in this school could succeed in killing the headmaster, it wasn't yet him, and it didn't need to be a gang of Death Eaters let inside through a repaired vanishing cabinet. Snape was capable of it - always had been. And this was why there was no room for him in Draco's plans. His plans were still unformed - a mess of conflicted loyalties between his family and the rest of the world. And though he didn't know what exactly his plans were yet, they did not include the elegant murder of Albus Dumbledore at the skilled and devious hands of Severus Snape.

He turned his head toward his professor, the clamour of his occulmens powers blaring a defense. "I'm sorry, sir. I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

And with that, he left.

* * *

"The Room of Requirement," Harry said, stretching on the sofa in the common room. "That's where Malfoy goes when he's off the Map."

"I could have told you that," Hermione said.

"Yeah, but you didn't," Harry snapped.

She looked up from her arithmancy book. "I was getting to it. I only just learned it today."

Harry was refolding the Map with less care than it deserved. "You were with him there today, after McGonagall, weren't you?"

"Yes, Harry," she said, stiffening. "Don't say it like you've caught me at something. It should hardly be a surprise by now."

Ron shuddered openly, satisfied to hear Harry telling her, "Honestly, Hermione, I don't know how you do it. You overthink everything but this. It makes no sense."

She tossed her head. "I think about nothing more than this. And yes, it doesn't make sense. It's love. And it's the only chance Draco has left."

Ron cringed harder than ever. "Love in the same way you love Harry and me, right?"

"No, Ronald."

"But you're alright there, aren't you Ron?" Harry said, rounding on him, grinning. "I can see you on the Map too, down in the Slytherin dungeon with Pansy Parkinson."

Harry was loosening up, acting normal instead of peeved and paranoid. Ron chased after it. "Hey Harry, last year, with Cho, how did you know it wasn't just - physical?"

Hermione laughed.

Harry was left shrugging. "Can't say I was ever sure of that."

"Nah," Ron protested. "You two had loads in common: quidditch, the DA, and everything."

"Yes, never an awkward lag in conversation between the two of us," Harry replied, bristling with sarcasm.

"There's more to romantic compatibility than shared pastimes," Hermione added.

"Look, I'm not here to hear it from Madam Malfoy."

The boys didn't see her jump at the title.

"We're talking about Parkinson, yeah?" Harry said. "I guess you could figure out what it is you like about her - apart from the fact that she's been willing to kiss you the odd time, I mean. Maybe start there?"

"See, that's it," Ron said, "I can think of loads of reasons not to like her - Slytherin, snob, rude - but…"

"It's the wrong question," Hermione burst back in. "Spare me your Madam Malfoy barbs and listen to someone who can maintain a delicate relationship. Ronald, you're trying to work out your own feelings so don't start with her, start with you. Do you feel more than excited when you're with her? Do you feel happy?"

His gaze drifted off, into the firelight. "Yeah."

Hermione nodded. "Well done."


	11. Chapter 11

Even when no one was there to see, Snape took his seat in the large armchair by the fire in his office with a dramatic spin. The headmaster would be appearing to meet with him by the floo soon, coming to Snape from St. Mungo's hospital, where Katie Bell was now recovering. Even if none of the tragic business with the girl's hexing had happened, there would still be much to report.

The Dark Lord was affected - afflicted - by the love charm created between Malfoy and Granger. When he discovered it on Draco's arm, the Dark Lord had been careless in handling it, cavalier about his still weakened state, and, Snape had to admit, naive about the magical potential of love. All of that Snape had deduced on his own as he treated the Dark Lord's injury.

What remained to be discussed and decided with the headmaster was how to exploit this injury.

As all of his students already knew, it was Snape's belief that children did not need coddling from the headmaster, the teachers, or any adults. There was a costly lesson to be learned in the crossed streams of information between Potter and the rest of the Order which had led to the utterly unnecessary death of Sirius Black.

Still, the headmaster was only this year beginning to bring Potter into the inner circle. At the same time, Granger and possibly even Malfoy should be taken into the Order's confidence, and the sooner the better.

At the very least, Granger needed counsel on how to preserve the power of the charm. Snape remembered with sneering distaste the memories of Granger's skin that rose up to meet him as soon as he breached Malfoy's mind. It was always this way with young people - bodies and appetites. With Potter it had been the teary lips of Cho Chang.

Snape had come to expect nothing less from his students. And the truth was that, if he had been treated to legilimency at age sixteen, his own mind would have been full of every touch, however small or unintended, from HER.

But if Granger had learned the love charm from the Hogwarts library, odds were it was an old Mitrian charm and that meant it demanded chastity. Snape jabbed at the fire with the poker at his hand. Perhaps she remembered that, insufferable pedant that she was.

It was possible that the pair of them might discover some way to use the charm against the Dark Lord. The idea of leveraging young love might not suit the romantic feelings of some of Snape's tender-hearted comrades within the Order. But, as he learned from the Dark Lord's lust for the Malfoys' blood this evening, turning romance into a weapon was becoming a matter of survival for young Malfoy - for all the Malfoys. And the Malfoys were always game for self-preservation.

And this was why, without discussion or permission, Snape had let Draco know that the Dark Lord hadn't been unaffected by the charm. Surely he would tell Granger, and between Hogwarts' two most clever students, perhaps they could learn something about it no one else was close enough to the charm to learn. They'd come this far almost by accident, and it charged Snape with a curious energy - was it hope?

Perhaps these children could do something, even if the headmaster and the rest of them refused to treat the students like they were capable of being as troublesome as Snape well knew them to be.

Snape eyed the clock on the mantelpiece, growing tense as he was made to wait. Like the Dark Lord, the headmaster was also under Snape's care for a curse seated in his hand. Both were dangerous and unpredictable.

Things had been tense between himself and the headmaster all term, thanks to the - arrangement between them. Snape's head jerked sideways at the very thought of it. He glanced around his shadowy office. If Snape upheld his end of the agreement with the headmaster, it would mean the end of all of this and much more.

How could he be blamed for grasping at what he might have found in Granger and Malfoy's charm? How could he not pursue every possible way out of what the headmaster had already decided was inevitable?

Snape thrashed in his chair, trying to settle himself. After all these years, the headmaster couldn't help but be caught up in Potter. No, of course he couldn't. But with Granger and Malfoy's love charm seated in his hand, there were now other students magically involved in the Dark Lord's body besides Potter. The time had come to convince the headmaster that Granger could no longer be thought of as a mere sidekick, nor Malfoy as a mere bully.

Malfoy - there was an aspect to the assignment given to the boy by the Dark Lord to which Snape had not been made privy. Whatever this secret was, Narcissa knew and it was driving her to desperation, to the clumsy stunt with the necklace today. Neither she nor the boy were yet prepared to fully confide in Snape. Yet still, when Snape tried to imagine what their remaining secret might be, it was never without a shudder.

At last, the floo was flaring from orange to green. The headmaster was calling.

* * *

Hermione and Draco sat together in a large armchair in a remote corner of the nearly empty library on a Saturday morning. The rest of the school had already left to sit in the stands around the quidditch pitch for the opening match between Slytherin and Gryffidor. Hermione sat in Draco's lap as he read from a book propped against her back. She sat jostling no less than four books at once, labeling and organizing them with flags and bookmarks.

Draco slammed his book closed. "Hermione, for the love of the Monks' purity clause, you've got to either sit still when you're in my lap, or else marry me."

She smirked. "Enough with the incessant proposing, Draco."

"Enough with the squirming then," he said, tugging at his clothes.

"I am not squirming. You're just sensitive."

"No argument there."

She laughed, turning to kiss him goodbye as she rose to stand. "Remember that the next time you pull me into a chair with you."

He caught her by both of her hands. "You don't have to go."

She squeezed his fingers but said, "I do though. The match is about to start and Harry - he's done something stupid, and it means Ron is going to play a particularly successful game of quidditch today, and he'll want me to see it so we can go over it, play by play, for the rest of the week."

Draco rearranged himself in the chair, watching her closely as she packed her books into her bag. "How nice it must be for your friends, that even with everything that's happening this year, they still have their minds on what's important: that game."

"Oh, don't grudge them a little fun," she said. "It helps relieve their tension."

He smoothed the hem of her skirt from where he sat, his fingers grazing the warm smooth skin just over of her knee, above her sock. Her short skirts on Saturdays weren't to satisfy the requirements of a uniform. He liked to think they were just for him. "Yes, I suppose not everyone can snog their worries away."

"Smug," she said, settling a large, yellowed volume onto his knees. "But The Chosen One could snog just about any girl he wanted at this school. And Ron isn't without admirers himself."

Draco raised his eyebrows, sceptical. "Weasley? Who in their right mind..."

"You'd be surprised." She laughed to herself. "And if Ron is ever going to have the luck he needs to seal the deal with his current favourite among them, it will be today."

"What, you're not his favourite anymore?"

She shrugged. "Almost certainly not."

Malfoy blinked. "Well, I'm just about offended."

She batted his arm. "Stop gloating, you nasty thing. Now, if you're not coming to the match, read the pages I've marked in this book about corporeal charms and the perils of attacking them. I think the one we made qualifies as corporeal. See what you make of it."

He nodded, accepting the book.

Her mind was still clicking away and she couldn't quite bring herself to leave yet. "Tell me one more time, Draco. How did Snape describe You-know-who's reaction to our charm?"

Draco squinted. "He said it attracted his attention and his ire."

"Ire," she repeated. "And you couldn't tell whether he was angry because it was pestering him, or whether it was actually - affecting him, as in, physically. Like a mosquito bite attracts ire, perhaps."

He shook his head. "I couldn't tell. Snape said it was 'troubling' and put all of us in a dangerous position. All of us including my mother and I think even Snape himself."

"And you didn't - "

"No," Draco said, throwing his arms around her waist, hiding his face in her stomach as if he was ashamed of himself. "He attacked me with legilimency as soon as I was through the door. The old creeper saw us together. I was feeling vulnerable and violated - livid - and I just wanted to escape. I should have forced myself to stay and find out more but I was overwhelmed and ran as soon as I could. I'm sorry."

She laced her fingers through his hair. "It's alright. You did well. Harry was in occulmency lessons with him last year and the fact you could keep Snape out at all is - "

"Don't compliment Aunt Bella's lessons," he interrupted. "Neither of us deserves your praise for that."

His face was still pressed against her, unable to look her in the face knowing he wouldn't read through the book she left him for very long after she left. Instead, he would go upstairs to work on phase one of Borgin's vanishing cabinet repair, in case the Dark Lord sent someone to approach the shopkeeper to ask how they were getting on. Until he figured out what to do next, he had to keep up the appearance of progress.

With a grey, unworthy sadness about himself he finally turned up his face to accept Hermione's parting kiss.

* * *

The quidditch match was rather amazing, a perfect victory for Gryffindor. When it was over, Ron came swooping down from the goalposts and into the cheering crowd.

"Weasley, Weasley," they chanted.

But in his head, all he heard was "Felix, Felix."

Hermione was there, applauding with the rest of her house, but Ron noticed that when she caught Harry's eye, she frowned and shook her head. She must have thought Harry was a complete fool, wasting his Liquid Luck to cheat at a game. He was certainly a fool. And Ron loved him for it.

The post-match euphoria bore Ron up the hill to the castle, up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, and into the heart of more raucous celebration in the common room. It was a perfect day, exactly as Slughorn said it would be. There was just one thing Ron needed to crown it all, and it was something he couldn't get in the Gryffindor common room. The dungeons - no one on the losing Slytherin team would be able to stand the sight of him right now, but with his luck, he would arrive safely in their dungeon corridor anyway, and then - the perfection would just keep rolling out from there.

Ron was making his final bow to his Gryffindor housemates, about to leave and move onto his next flawless victory of the day. He stood in the centre of the room, in a whirl of food and drinks, music and voices, and then suddenly, as if conjured out of nowhere, there was a pair of soft, smooth arms around his neck, and glossy lips against his. The crowd cheered louder. It was hard to see her this close, but Ron left his eyes open to recognize Lavender Brown as the girl kissing him passionately in front of everyone.

In his mind, Ron had no idea what to do. His body, however, responded just as it had to Pansy's when she kissed him in public, on the dancefloor at the Yule Ball, without permission. His mindless, greedy arms closed around her body and his mouth kissed back. His mind raced to keep up. If Lavender was the girl who presented herself while he was under the influence of Harry's Felix Felicis, then this couldn't be wrong. He hadn't suspected or expected it, but here she was all the same.

And while Ron's body and his mind tried to make sense of the situation at hand, Ron's heart was clamouring for something else entirely. It wanted him to push Lavender Brown away, even if it meant she was humiliated in front of all of her friends, even if Felix Felicis had hand delivered her to him as part of its perfection. She wasn't who his heart wanted but she was here, today, and so he kissed her, where anyone could see it, anyone could talk about it, and anyone could hear about it.

Trust in Felix, his mind said. There's no arguing with the magic it brought on the quidditch pitch. This is the perfect day, and somehow, Lavender Brown must be the perfect girl.

From the crowd, Hermione watched them, frowning more deeply than ever.

Harry frowned back at her, shaking his head, drawing from his pocket a corked, wax-sealed vial of Felix Felicis, not a drop of it spent.

"Oh my stars," she said. "Harry go stop him. He thinks… Stop him, Harry. If Pansy - Oh, no."

Harry looked back at Ron and Lavender, a tangle of arms and hair, their faces not even visible. "Er, right. In a bit."

Lavender kept Ron busy, and the boys didn't speak again until they were in their bedroom, at the end of the night. Harry came out of the bathroom to find Ron sitting on the edge of his bed, one sock off, one on, looking a little sick.

Harry heaved a great sigh. "Big day, yeah. How are you feeling, Ron?"

He pulled off his remaining sock. "Not so good. Must be some kind of withdrawal symptom, from the potion. Should have expected it, but still - "

"About that - "

"Right decent of you, Harry, wasting it on me. Probably not the smartest thing you could have done though. If I had this day to do over again, I'd make you save it."

"Ron, listen - "

"Perfect is not what I thought it'd be. Now that it's over, I just feel - empty. Like I lost something - "

"Shut up, will you?" Harry said, brandishing the vial in Ron's face. "You played a perfect game on your own. Without your nerves, you're brilliant, and so I let you think there was nothing to be nervous about."

Ron stood up from his bed, fists clenched around his socks, knuckles white. "I played on my own? I did it all on my own?"

"Yes."

"I did all of it on my own. All of it, the whole day? The quidditch and - and Lavender Brown - "

"Yes. And by now, everyone knows it."

Ron gasped. "Everyone? Murder me, Harry."


	12. Chapter 12

Both of Ron's socks were back on his feet. He was dressed in his full uniform and prefect's badge and heading out of the bedroom, Harry hauling on his arm.

"Wait until morning, Ron. There's nothing you can do about it tonight. By now Pansy will be shut up in the Slytherin dungeon, and she may have not even heard what's happened."

He shook Harry off as they descended the stairs to the common room. "Then I can be the one to tell her first."

"What's all the noise about? What are the two of you doing?" Hermione hissed from the foot of the girls' stairs.

Harry waved at Ron. "He's gone and had a change of heart. Came on the moment he found out he wasn't enchanted today and now he wants to find Pansy and beg forgiveness."

"I didn't have a change of heart," Ron rushed. "I had a change of mind, once you confessed you'd tricked me and everything started making sense again."

"I hardly see how this is my fault - "

"Ronald, stop," Hermione said in a tone of heavy finality. "First things first. Up there, right now," she pointed to the stairwell behind her, "my roommate is sitting on her bed with her friends celebrating her new boyfriend. She's rosy and giggling and crazy about you. That has to be settled before you take one more step in Pansy Parkinson's direction. Your forgiveness begging begins here in the tower."

Ron blanched. She was right. "Fine, I'll just go back to bed."

"Ronald, that is not what I said - "

"I'm sorry, I hardly know Lavender. I have no idea how to break up with her."

"Which is why you should slow down and wait until the morning," Harry said. "Things won't be any worse by then."

Ron hung his head, nodding at his feet.

"Promise me you won't skip the part where you break up with Lavender first," Hermione demanded.

"Right, I promise," he said, eyes clenched shut in anguish.

Hermione was shaking her head, turning to climb the stairs when Ron called her back. "One more thing," he said, "would you cut my hair tonight, Hermione? Pansy told me to cut it, months ago. And I told her no. But tonight - I feel like I'd better. Like it's a sign of my good faith."

Harry coughed out a laugh.

Hermione pursed her lips, nodding. "I think that's a lovely sentiment, Ronald. Change your clothes and meet me back here in a minute."

Shirtless, Ron sat under a towel in the common room as Hermione combed out his hair. "Short," he said. "So every inch of my neck is visible."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Like you're in the Muggle army?"

Ron ducked his head. "No."

"I wasn't about to," Hermione said, righting his head. "Hold still. Right, show off your neck but leave a bit of length up top."

"But don't make me look like a ginger Malfoy," he warned.

She scoffed. "No chance of that."

* * *

Snape was in the last place he wanted to be: mounting the steps to the front doors of Malfoy Manor. It was late at night, dark, silent. As much as the headmaster's most infuriating flaw was an over-abundance of patience, always calling on Snape to wait, the Dark Lord was flawed in having no patience at all. The mark on Snape's arm was still burning as he let himself inside the mansion.

Narcissa, as she always was now, was sitting just inside the door, at the piano. Despite the lateness of the hour, she was not wearing a nightdress. Instead, she sat as if ready to make her escape, to surrender her husband and son's ancestral home to the devil who had taken it over.

She spoke Snape's name as she rose. "You must leave something with me to soothe him, Severus. I am also a skilled healer, allow me - "

"Thank your stars, Narcissa, that he expects nothing from you in this regard," he snapped, swooping past her, not to the drawing room this time, but upstairs, to where the Dark Lord lay in bed.

A hex crashed against the doorframe as he entered the room, aimed to scare rather than to kill. "You've come alone," the Dark Lord growled.

"I have, my lord," Snape said, locking himself inside.

"You have not brought her to me," the Dark Lord shouted, the taut tendons in his neck pulling his head off the pillow. "You dare delay. You dare not bring her when you are the only one who can, now that the headmaster keeps his students tucked safely inside his school, no outings, completely out of our reach. I await your explanation for your defiance of my order, Severus."

He stepped closer to the bed. "My lord, it is true that both you and I harbour doubts as to whether Miss Parkinson is indeed the caster of such an atrociously persistent charm. And if she is not its caster, and I risk my position at Hogwarts by snatching her away for you, I will not get a second chance to take the true caster. I will be shut out with the rest of your servants."

The Dark Lord thrashed in his bed.

Snape reached for the wounded hand. "I beg you, my Lord, indulge me in interviewing the girl through normal channels, as her teacher and head of house, before I resort to kidnapping her and exposing all we've worked for."

An ominous laugh rose from the bed. "If young Malfoy succeeds, we shall have no need of your normal channels or sneaky second chances. We will have full rein to take every witch at Hogwarts and interrogate them systematically, one by one, until they beg us to drag the guilty one away."

Snape fell to his knees. "How, my lord? Tell me. What is this aspect of Malfoy's mission that you keep hidden from me? There is no need to wait on his inexperience. I can help him. It could be done."

Another dark chuckle. "He succeeds in hiding it from you, does he? A pleasant and unexpected development. No, Severus. It is too risky to employ a servant who knows too much. I trust you, treasure you. And I will grant you the mercy of withholding all that I know from you. For now," he said, extending his closed fist, "I will allow you to interview the girl at the school. Bring me the right witch and bring her soon. In the meantime, I require relief."

The Dark Lord opened his hand, like a foul flower blooming. Even without the diagnostic aid of his wand, the mark of Granger and Malfoy's charm was visible to Snape. It was no longer a flickering glow, but had resolved into faint white lines, almost like runes carved and scarred over on the skin of the Dark Lord's palm. Nothing about the marks was readable nor recognizable, but as he looked at them, Snape felt as if he was just on the verge of understanding.

The balm he had been bringing slowed the progression of the injury but did not stop it. The Dark Lord was unsatisfied with it and Snape didn't dare use it again tonight. Instead, he applied a poultice, packing it into the palm and binding it to the Dark Lord's hand.

"I have reserved this treatment until now," Snape explained, "because I did not wish to interfere with the use of your wand hand."

The Dark Lord took his wand, cradling its handle in just the tips of his fingers. It would do.

Snape bowed his head. "May this give you relief, until I report again."

* * *

Between knocking his glasses onto the floor and Ron's new haircut, Harry barely recognized the boy standing over Neville's bed early on a Sunday morning, raving about gillyweed.

"See, if she locks herself in the dungeons and won't see me, I don't know how else I'll reach her. If she was in Ravenclaw, all it would take would be a ride on a broom to get to her dorm window. Digging to the Hufflepuff dorms would be harder. But Slytherin is full-on underwater, init? So gillyweed will do the trick, I reckon."

Neville lay crusty-eyed, as if stupefied. "Or," Neville said, "Or you could wait and catch her in class on Monday?"

"Monday?" Ron sputtered. "Monday? That's ages away."

Harry found his glasses and rushed in. "Ron, all the gillyweed in the lake won't get you past the mer-people. Not to mention the trouble you'd be in, creeping around the girls' windows."

Ron spun away from Neville. "Oh Harry, you're finally up."

Had Ron slept at all?

"It's early, Ron. Leave everyone alone. Or better yet, go wait in the common room for Lavender. You need to talk, remember?"

He went downstairs to pace in his pajamas. Parvati Patil came down first, smirking at him, giggling as she trotted back up the stairs to fetch Lavender. His body, the wicked thing, reacted to the sight of her - the sweet, softness of her face, the flowery smell of her hair. His face was flushed and she was reaching for him, moving to ruffle the short hair at the nape of his neck. He caught her hand and laid it back by her side.

"Lavender, I'm so sorry…"

By the time breakfast was served in the Great Hall, Ron's early morning mania was over. He sat with his forehead against the tabletop, eating nothing.

"I'm the worst," he said to his shoes. "I'm the worst person."

Harry clapped him on the back, but Hermione said, "Yes, yes you are."

Ron sobbed dryly beneath the table.

"Put your head up and eat something anyway," Harry said. "If you stay like that, you won't be able to see - the one you do want, when she comes in."

Ron groaned and rolled his head so he was lying on his cheek, looking at Harry. "I don't deserve to be with her. I don't deserve to be with any of them."

"True enough," Hermione said.

"I made a floozy out of one of the nicest people in our year." He groaned again.

Hermione sniffed. "You don't have that kind of power over her. Now stop your wallowing."

"You were up all night. If you can't eat, at least go back to bed." Harry said, cutting the last syllable short with a sharp intake of breath.

Ron heard it and sat up straight. Pansy had entered the hall.

She startled only very slightly at the sight of him, shorn hair and everything, before lifting her chin and looking away. Her gang walked primly alongside her, not wasting a single glare on him. At the Slytherin table, Pansy forced her way between Blaise Zabini and Theo Nott, nudging them aside with her hips. She glanced at Ron as she leaned into Blaise, laughing.

Ron didn't go to the library with Harry and Hermione after breakfast. He was too tired to study but not tired enough to shut down his self-induced heart-ache and actually sleep. Instead, he left the castle, trudging toward the quidditch field house, where he would find his broom and fly until he was exhausted enough to sleep.

He kicked off the grass, missing the feeling of wind in his hair. He set off for the lake first, flying low over the water, catching a glimpse of the roof of the submerged Slytherin dormitory. He pulled up as the Forbidden Forest rose before him, the snaggled tops of the twisted trees along its perimeter clawing up toward his feet.

Something flashed in his peripheral vision. Maybe he was too much like tasty bait, flying so close to a forest full of dangerous magical creatures. He flew higher, wheeling back in the direction of what he'd only half seen. It turned out to be just another broom, another student flying over the Hogwarts grounds on a Sunday, during the highest, warmest sun of a late autumn day.

The other broom wasn't racing but trick flying, the other flyer drifting along with both their arms spread wide, their spine bent backward in a delicate curve. Ron couldn't help but be impressed at the smooth line of flight, the control they were able to maintain with just their thighs gripped around the broomstick.

He gasped. "Pansy."

Ron leaned over his broom, bearing hard toward her. She saw him and grasped her broom again, turning sharply, tucking in low over the grassy hills, flying along their contours.

He was getting closer. He could see her black bobbed hair rippling in the wind. In a moment she would be able to hear him if he called her name. Her family was wealthy and her broom was new and fast. But he was the Gryffindor keeper who had just played a perfect game without magical help, and she couldn't outpace him.

She looked over her shoulder, sneering as he closed in from behind. He extended his left arm, driving toward her at full speed, and scooped her off her broom. Pansy yelped as it fell away.

"Steady!" he called over the rush of the wind as she struggled against him.

"Ronald Weasley, you set me down."

"Steady, Parkinson!"

They were descending in a steep, erratic line, Pansy barely balanced on the broomstick, pulling at his arm, clamped around her middle, his fingers pressed into her flesh. Ron held her with one arm and fought to control the broom with his other hand.

"Pick your feet up. We're landing," he called.

She wasn't quick enough and her foot came down hard against the grass, jarring and twisting her ankle. She squealed in pain as he howled in remorse.

"Are you hurt?" he said, dropping the broom and falling to his knees next to where she sat. He was taking her foot between his hands.

She slapped at him. "Of course I'm hurt, you idiot. You sprained my ankle."

He was unlacing her trainer. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Oh, I bet you are."

He held her foot, rotating it gently before bending to kiss it.

She yelped again. "What are you doing?"

"Begging forgiveness," he said. "Everything with Lavender Brown - it was all madness. I thought I was enchanted and I may as well have been. It was awful."

She snarled. "That's not how I heard it. Get off me, Weasley."

He released her foot. "It was awful. It wasn't me and," he swallowed hard, "it wasn't you."

Pansy was labouring to stand.

"Parkinson, listen to me," he went on, taking her arm, leaning into her as she leaned on him. "You're the only one I want to fly with. You're the only one I want to be close enough to smell. I want to bring you medicine when you're sick. I want to cut my hair to look like one of your Slytherin gits. I want your plum lipstick smeared all over my face and neck. I don't even mind if you bite. I want to…"

He glanced around the empty field, looking for something else to confess. "I want to carry you back to the castle and get your ankle fixed. I'm so sorry, Pansy, for everything. I fancy you rotten. Please..."

She looked everywhere too - at her shoe-less foot, her broom lying where it fell on the grass, at the red tips of Ron's ears - before she let out a long breath. "Weasley, I will not be the one to kiss you first this time."

His arms clamped around her middle and he stooped to kiss her, speechless with relief. His heart cheered, his mind shrugged, and his body roared in approval. Her lips were smaller than Lavender's but more sure, confident as a commander marching back into rightful home territory, opening against his mouth. The palms of her hands moved up his neck, over the short, squared ends of his newly cut hair.

She broke away to speak as Ron kissed along her jawline, down her neck. "No more kissing anyone else."

"No," he breathed, "just you."

* * *

As ordered, Malfoy was first to arrive, getting to Snape's office just after curfew, dressed as a patrolling prefect, watching over his shoulder for Hermione.

"Leave the door ajar," Snape said as he came in, his occulmency protection fully engaged. Draco waited in an edgy quiet for Snape to begin. Snape did not turn to face him yet, but stood twirling his wand, saying nothing until he heard a second set of footsteps moving through the door.

"Shut it," he said, finally rounding on Draco and on Hermione who had come as well. The two of them stood a full metre apart before his office door, their arms at their sides.

"The happy couple."

Six years on and everything Snape said still made Hermione feel like a helpless idiot. She shifted on her feet, fighting not to glance at Malfoy.

"Since the Yule Ball?"

"Yes, sir," Draco answered.

"A long time to be - infatuated."

"Yes, sir."

Snape lunged suddenly, forcefully over his desk, gripping its edges with both hands. "Though it is not possible that your feelings are deep. If they were, then you, Miss Granger, would not have risked the safety of the entire Malfoy family by charming a love token into the flesh you knew the Dark Lord reserves for his mark."

Her mouth fell open, working but not speaking.

Snape threw himself upright. "Do not deny it, Miss Granger. The Dark Lord has told me what he found on Mr. Malfoy. You and your sentimental, childish, foolhardy, ignorant - "

"Draco doesn't belong to the Death Eaters. They're forcing him. He's not theirs. He's mine." The words exploded from her, too loud in the small, crowded, underground space. Her eyes stung as if she was about to cry.

Snape sneered but sat down, satisfied somehow. "Show me," he said.

Hermione took a quick, obedient step in Draco's direction, reaching for his sleeve. He jerked his arm behind his back, shaking his head. Each of them trusted Snape, but only one of them knew the kind of double-dealing agent he truly was.

"No need for the heroics, Draco," Snape said, rising to his feet. "I have been asked to investigate - "

"You're not touching her," Draco said, pushing Hermione behind himself, his voice quiet but his wand drawn.

"I have been asked to investigate," Snape continued, as if uninterrupted, "by Professor Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix."

Draco gripped his wand. "No. No, you're - "

"Draco, it's alright," Hermione was saying from behind his shoulder. "Professor Snape's role in all of this, it's - "

"None of your business," Snape finished. "I have the headmaster's confidence as well as your mother's, Draco. Allow Miss Granger to show me what remains of your charm, and perhaps we can help."


	13. Chapter 13

Snape stood looming over Draco and Hermione in the centre of his office floor. He was no longer taller than Draco, but standing before Snape still made him feel like a child, a little boy incapable of defying him. But little boy Draco was not here. In his place was a person clutching Hermione Granger's wrist, stepping in front of her, a living barrier between her and Snape.

Draco started with her. "Hermione, I don't know who you think Professor Snape is," he said, "but you don't know him like I do. He's been in my life since before you even knew what magic was, and I can tell you he doesn't fight for the same things as you."

Snape seemed amused. "Vague enough to be fair enough."

Draco's courage was mounting, and he had turned to look Snape directly in the face when he said, "You told me summoning Hermione's mark drew the Dark Lord's attention and his ire. You said it put us all in danger - my mother too. And now you're asking us to show it to you tonight just because you're curious? Because you'd like to see it?"

Snape frowned. "The headmaster believes the information I could glean from examining it would be worth - the risk."

"Our risk," Draco corrected him. "If it's so important, then why isn't Professor Dumbledore here looking at it himself?"

Hermione startled. Draco's complaint about an absent Dumbledore's sounded like Harry's, all through last year.

Snape was no longer frowning. "Come now, Draco, the headmaster has many reasons not to make you his pet this year, does he not?"

Draco's face blanched white.

"The hand of the Dark Lord is upon you, Mr. Malfoy. The less you see of the headmaster, the better for everyone. I am the envoy Professor Dumbledore has chosen to deal with people of your - ilk. As in any coordinated reconnaissance effort, the Order's activities are multi-faceted and the headmaster is engaged elsewhere."

"With Harry," Hermione supplied. "With Harry's private lessons, and with Professor Slughorn, and with something called horcruxes."

Snape's eyes narrowed. "Miss Granger, what the headmaster has deemed private ought to remain - absolutely - private."

"I agree with him there," Draco said. "As long as we don't know who we can trust, it's best if we all keep our secrets."

"Well, I disagree," Hermione said, scuffling with Draco to push him aside so she could better speak with Snape, but winding up more entwined, held back in both of Draco's arms instead. "If we'd all been able to be more open with each other last year, Sirius Black might not have died."

At the mention of that night at the Department of Mysteries, Draco's hold on her cinched tighter. She fought on anyway. "Professor Snape," she said, "there is nothing left on horcruxes in any of the books in the library. It's as if it's been purged. So I am forced to speak to you about them here - "

"Miss Granger - "

"All I know is that horcruxes have something to do with Voldemort's return and Harry and spells that leave strong lingering traces in physical objects and bodies - "

"Hermione, don't say any - "

"And isn't that what our charm is?" she called over their voices. "The mark I left on Draco's arm - it's not a curse, it's a blessing. It's got to be why the Dark Mark hasn't corrupted him. It's why Voldemort is too afraid to summon him to himself anymore - "

"Miss Granger - !"

"Professor Snape, tell me. Isn't our charm the same as a horcrux, another kind of a corporeal charm?"

Snape lunged closer. "You have jumped to some startling conclusions, Miss Granger. Some very dangerous ones indeed. And I can hardly be expected to tell you anything about your charm if I can't see it for myself. The residue left on the Dark Lord from when he vanished it tells me next to nothing."

From between his arms, Hermione looked up at Draco. He shook his head, still refusing.

"Then I'll just draw it for him," she offered, "with a quill on a parchment."

Draco hated it but could think of no objection to it. She stood at the corner of Snape's desk and reproduced the image of the love charm, inking the outline of an upturned hand with a heart and the word "hope" in romanized, not runic text. Snape watched her down the bridge of his nose. As she handed him the parchment to inspect it, she expected to be mocked, braced herself.

For a moment, Snape regarded the image without a word. "Mitrian?" he asked.

"A modification of the Mitrian method, yes," she nodded.

"Your animal familiar?"

"A half-kneazle cat."

This drew a hum from him. "And the purity clause?"

"We abide by it," she rushed to say.

Snape cast a long, narrow, skeptical glare at Malfoy. "See that you do. If you find you cannot, report to me immediately and I will bond you in marriage. I have that authority."

"But my parents - "

" - Will accept my counsel to offer their consent, should it be needed."

Malfoy nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Oh, for the love of stars…" Hermione slammed the quill on the desk, folding her arms over her chest. "We've shown you this much and thus far it's been for nothing. Please, sir, give us something in return."

With a rush of black robes Snape sat in the chair behind his desk. "I will, on the condition that when I am finished, you will summon the charm."

Draco blew his drooping fringe of white hair off his forehead. "Alright."

Snape leaned back until his chair creaked beneath him. "A Mitrian love charm is not a horcrux. A horcrux is a fragmenting of an immortal soul. It magnifies the soul but also degrades it, irreparably. IF your Mitrian charm is properly executed, it will not involve your souls, merely your - love." The word seemed putrid in his mouth.

"Is it," Hermione pushed, "is our charm similar to Harry's scar? His mother's spell that protected him from Voldemort's killing curse, it was also rooted in love, and it left a mark left on Harry's body in that scar something like - "

Her question died as Snape flung himself forward, his eyes black and burning, his voice hissing at her between clenched teeth. "You dare to compare your tawdry flirtation to Lily Evans' sacrifice?"

"No, sir. I didn't mean to. I'm only asking whether - "

Snape was rising from behind his desk like a kraken coming out of the sea, his hair hanging in tendrils over his face, dark, enraged, the furious energy about him filling the entire room, sending shivers through Hermione as she lifted her head to watch him.

It was too much. Draco pulled her back. His left arm bared. "Stand down, sir." He called to Snape through the madness of his rage. "Here, let us show you."

Draco's eyes met Hermione's. She was on the verge of tears, her chin quivering. In this state, she wouldn't be able to muster the magical intent needed to reveal the charm. Draco knew it and bent to kiss her lips, the hand of his unmarked arm cupping the back of her neck. "Show him, love," he whispered into her mouth, "like you wanted to."

She leaned to press a kiss on Draco's Dark Mark, lightly, nervously, and then, as she thought about kissing not the Mark but the token of hope beneath it, she moved her lips against his arm with something closer to the ardor with which she first cast the spell. Blue light flashed and she withdrew. From the light, shining marks resolved, broken but visible.

The spectacle shook Snape out of his rage. His brow furrowed with wonder instead of anger, he stooped to inspect Draco's arm, now laid against the top of the desk. Snape had been expecting to see dull lines, colourless scars, not living lights in Draco's skin. His fingers reached out, as if to touch the blue glow, but recoiled just before they did. Instead, he held Hermione's drawing, looking between it and Draco for signs of the girl's curves and edges in the boy's flesh.

"Exceptional," he breathed, almost too softly for them to hear. "This is what burns and maddens the Dark Lord. I minister to him with balms and salves, he works it with his own wand, yet it persists."

"But how can it help?" Hermione asked, looking away from the charm, somehow, its light reflecting on her face as she spoke to Snape. "What do we do with it now?"

Snape grapsed Draco's arm above the elbow, tilting it to memorize the charm from every angle as Draco forced himself not to tear away from this far too intimate contact with his teacher.

When the light faded away, Snape's cold fingers released him. Snape forced a cough. "I will confer with the headmaster. The three of us shall talk again soon. Say nothing to no one."

"Not even Harry?"

He rounded on Hermione, angry again. "Especially not Potter. There is nothing he knows that the Dark Lord can't bring himself to see if he pushes hard enough. Now guard yourselves, and go."

In the corridor outside Snape's office, Draco leaned heavily against the wall, his spine against the stonework, breathing deeply, as if Snape really was a kraken and they'd just made their escape. Hermione coiled her arms around his waist and let herself fall into his chest. He palmed the back of her head, indulging in a minute's rest before pushing off the wall and moving farther away from Snape's office.

"Did you hear him?" he asked, leading her by the hand up the stairs. "'Tell no one,' he says. The nerve. After he could hardly force us to tell him anything." He sighed. "Snape - what is Snape?"

She smirked. "The line among the Order is that as long as Dumbledore trusts him, everyone does. Everyone except for Harry, of course."

Draco stopped, pausing a stair below her, their faces near the same height. "Well at last, Potter and I have something in common. How can Dumbledore trust Snape when the Dark Lord trusts him too?"

She folded her arms around his shoulders. "It makes about as much sense as Draco Malfoy slinking around the castle all night with Hermione Granger."

He took her face in his hands. "Yet here he is all the same. And she's been heard to say, 'He's mine.'"

"'You're not touching her,'" she said, quoting the words he'd spoken the moment he drew his wand and stood up to Snape to defend her.

"That was rather handsome of me, wasn't it?"

"I'll remember it all my life," Hermione said as his lips pressed into hers. He let go of her face and plunged his hands inside her robes, pulling her chest to his, his hands growing warmer against her jumper, and then against her skin, tracing the curve of her waist with his palms. From where she stood above him on the stairs, she lifted her leg to settle her ankle into the back of his knee, drawing him closer, her hips against his stomach.

His voice was hoarse. "He's still in his office. Let's go back and get married."

"Malfoy, can't I snog you without having to fend off proposals anymore?"

"It's not my idea this time. It's our professor."

She dropped her foot, groaning as she pushed off his chest. "This was your worst one yet."

He laughed into the crook of her neck. "Sorry. Don't stop snogging me over it, yeah?"

She tipped her head back to smile at him in the yellow firelight of the stairwell torches. "Don't stop asking me either."

* * *

Ron was no longer grieving at breakfast, but he was certainly sulking. A massive bowl of warm oatmeal and stewed peaches and cream sat encircled in his arms on the table in front of him as he ate away at it, gazing miserably at the Slytherin table.

"She's right, you know," Hermione told him from behind her Daily Prophet. "It's better for the self-respect of everyone involved if you aren't seen stepping out with Pansy before half the school even realizes you've finished with Lavender."

He sighed into his oatmeal. "Right."

"It's not like you don't get to snog her in private, yeah?" Harry said, ever helpful. "Secret relationship - best of both worlds, right Hermione?"

She slapped him on the head with her newspaper.

"Only I'm not snogging her in private," Ron moaned. "Since right after she accepted me, outside on the green, she's had me doing penance. I can worship her all I like as long as I don't touch her until she's satisfied I've learned my lesson. It's torture - well-deserved torture, I guess."

Harry and Hermione exchanged smirks. "How badly does she want to throw people off your relationship, Ron?" Hermione asked. "Would it help if I asked you to go with me to the Slug Club Christmas party?"

He shrugged. "Might. Or it might get me walloped. Hard to say. Better not risk it."

Across the Great Hall, Pansy had finished her breakfast and was standing up from the Slytherin table, straightening her skirt, failing to notice Theo Nott paying very close attention as she did so. Ron growled miserably into his bowl. She hadn't even reached the exit before he'd pushed his breakfast away and leapt up to chase after her.

Harry called out as he sprinted away. "Subtle, Ron!"

Speaking of subtle, Cormac McLaggen was already taking Ron's spot beside Hermione. Beset with flashbacks of this year's quidditch tryouts, where Harry had passed over McLaggen as keeper in favour of Ron, Harry could not abandon Hermione to him any faster.

Leaving was worth it even if it meant Hermione didn't speak to him for the rest of the morning. When she did it was to inform him that McLaggen was now her date to the Slug Club party.

"I agreed but he must know I'm not exactly - available. Right, Harry? Everyone plays along like I'm not actually with Malfoy but no one truly believes it, do they? I mean, even McLaggen must have noticed Malfoy breaking a plate the moment he asked me."

Harry shrugged. If there was anyone at Hogwarts who thought enough of himself to consider challenging one of the longest, and definitely the most complicated relationship at the school, it could only be Cormac McLaggen.

The broken plate notwithstanding, Malfoy seemed to forget about the Christmas party he hadn't been invited to rather easily. It was weeks away, and he failed to connect it to the dress catalogue Hermione pulled out as rest-reading during a study session in the library.

"Which of these do you prefer," she asked him, crowding next to him in his chair as they sat hidden by one of Malfoy's passageway spells. She flipped between two pages. "Do you like the pink or the blue?"

He was usually inclined to recommend blue for her, but the pink dress had a much deeper neckline. He tapped its page with his finger. "This one. The blue one has an A-line skirt. Not as formal."

She smiled. "You do like things as dressy as possible, don't you? Shame you won't be coming with me."

He dropped his book. "This is for the Slug Club Christmas party?"

"Of course."

"This is for McLaggen?"

She tossed her head. "No, it's for me. And I'll let you see me in it and dance me around first, as always."

He was grabbing for her catalogue. "Well, that dress - the pink one, it - it won't be warm enough for a December night. Let's keep looking."

She was laughing at him. "It's fine, Draco. I'll bring a shawl, but I won't need it."

He was still reaching for the catalogue when she tossed it aside and took his face in her hands, boosting herself into his lap, speaking softly into his face. "Just say you'll come with me to the party instead of Cormac. I'd prefer to dump him while there's still plenty of time for him to find someone else. I'll go do it now, as soon as you say the word."

"We can't - "

She kept his forehead pressed to hers. "Why not, Draco? We've been carrying on in secret for two years now. I didn't realize how obvious things like this are to other people until I had to watch Ron and Pansy trying to sneak around."

Draco pulled his head back, gaping. "Ron and Pansy?"

"Yes, of course. Don't tell me you didn't know."

He blinked. "I didn't know."

With a small kiss, she refocused his attention on herself. "Well you would have noticed them after two years of it. I think even clueless Cormac is beginning to wonder about you and me. So enough, Draco. Come to the party with me. Spend an evening sauntering around Slughorn's office holding my hand and looking adoringly down the neckline of my new pink dress."

He let out a long sigh. "Hermione, You-know-who still doesn't know you're the witch who cast my charm. If you start appearing with me in page four society photos in the Daily Prophet, he'll definitely figure it out."

"Which would be a whole lot fairer to Pansy Parkinson, frankly - "

"Yes, but a whole lot more threatening for the charm," Draco reasoned. "We still don't know if there might be a way to attack him through it. And until we do, we have to hide the charm's true caster. Let the headmaster and the rest of them worry about protecting Pansy."

She sat back, sulking. "They protect her no differently than they protect all of us: by keeping her inside the castle. As long as we're in here, we're safe."

Draco looked suddenly, profoundly sad. He pulled her closer, whispering, "What if they found a way inside the castle?"

She twitched. "They won't. They can't."

He clenched his eyes closed. "But what if they did, Hermione? If they got inside and they found you, knowing who you really are - " He crushed her in his arms, shuddering. "No, I'm sorry, love. You won't be seeing me at Slughorn's party."


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Darker chapter than usual. Don't despair, readers! On ao3 this fic is tagged "eventual fluff" so bear that in mind. Love, DDD**

The dress Draco chose from Hermione's catalogue of holiday robes did not arrive at Hogwarts until the morning of Slughorn's party.

"It's a Christmas miracle," Draco grumbled when she told him.

She stepped closer to him in the alcove where she'd stopped him to tell him the good news. "Malfoy, either stop being so fussy about it or come with me to the party. I'll throw Cormac over right now."

He sighed and declined, trying to cheer up.

His reasons for not wanting word about his connection to Hermione to spread outside the school were still perfectly good reasons. But in addition to them, Draco needed to remain available to Borgin tonight. The school was emptying for the holidays, making this evening a prime time to arrange a test of Draco's progress with the sham of his cabinet repair project. He had worked on it all term, nervous and sick with self-loathing, caught in a task so vile he had no one to call on but Crabbe and Goyle to disguise themselves and stand watch outside the Room of Hidden Things. They wouldn't be watching tonight.

The repair process was slow - Draco made sure of it. It meant for some unpleasant meetings where his mother was sent to beg the Dark Lord to be patient with him, but awful as the meeting were, they were preferable to having Death Eaters in the castle for Christmas. After all these months, the cabinet was no longer useless but it was still not fully repaired. Draco was sure of it - almost sure. He and Borgin would assess the full extent of his progress tonight.

After the test, a report would be made to the Dark Lord, and a little more time would be bought - more time to keep his mother safe even in her death-drowned house, more time for Snape to pretend to be searching the school for the witch who cast the love charm.

The truth was that the Dark Lord would rather see Hogwarts overrun with Death Eaters than infiltrated by spies. He'd rather have the headmaster killed and the witch who cast the love charm captured through a bold invasion rather than through treachery. It was better for his movement. Treachery was a weapon for spies and cowards, not conquerors like he envisioned himself to be.

When she had finished dressing for the party, Hermione climbed to the seventh floor, to the Room of Hidden Things. Draco always seemed to be able to summon it these days, and he was hidden there tonight himself, making it visible to her. She came through the door to find him on the rug, tossing an apple between his hands, sitting in front of a mass of broken wooden furniture, most of it draped in dingy white dust covers, some in richly coloured velvet.

Light was coming from somewhere but the room was still so dim the pink of her dress may as well have been coloured blue. As he always did at these pre-event meetings for fancy dress parties they couldn't attend together, Draco sprang to his feet at the sight of her. The dress was self-tailoring, perfectly fitted, cut in a low V in the front, slim at the waist, with a full, gathered knee-length skirt. Her arms were bare and she wore her hair down, falling past her shoulders, pinned up and away from her face in the front.

He squinted at her. "Granger, are you blushing?"

She took his hand and let him pull her to him. "Maybe a little. The neckline - it's lovely on paper, and I'd think nothing of it on someone else, but it's not how I usually dress."

His right hand curled around her waist, a dance hold that came naturally to them even though they had danced in public together precisely once. "It's perfect, a grown up look," he said. "You're not some girl done up in a fancy dress anymore. You look like who you really are: a beautiful woman."

Her hand rose from his shoulder to his neck. "Do you like me as a woman? That's not who I was when you first took me on."

He pulled her tighter and turned them in a circle, dancing in rhythm though without music. "I love you like this, and every other way there is for you to be."

She hummed through a smile, her head on his shoulder. "But being here, dancing in private, it makes me nostalgic for when we were younger. Makes me miss being fifteen and forced into dance lessons by McGonagall to preserve the school's honor at the Triwizard Tournament, all the while scandalized at myself for falling for Draco Malfoy."

"Best scandal ever."

She raised her face to speak against his throat. "Your neck was scrawnier then. And your hair was longer. And," she said, spinning on the end of his arm, settling back into him so his arms crossed in front of her, her back along his chest, "in those days, you weren't so sad."

His head drooped forward, into the crook of her neck, exhaling and raising shivers through her.

She turned to face him. He wasn't ready to stop dancing yet and arranged her arms back into dance posture, stepping into her, nudging her backward through the footwork of a waltz. She didn't follow his lead so much as drift before it, after all this time, perfectly tuned to the pace of his movement, the length of his steps - her partner.

"Draco, I don't feel like I can leave you tonight. I'll get Harry to tell Slughorn I'm ill. I'll stay with you. It's the last night before you go back to your haunted Manor for Christmas and I can't - I just can't turn on my heel for a stupid party and let you go."

The waltzing stopped. Gently, Draco pressed two fingers into the soft hollow of her throat. She lifted her face higher, expecting to be kissed. He bent toward her but held his mouth just above hers, connecting instead with the motion of his finger tips, tracing a line away from her throat, down the flat of her sternum, not stopping where her breasts began to swell on either side, bared by her dress, her skin smooth and warm, her body falling away from his touch as she let out a shocked breath, but not moving away.

He left his fingers cradled where they were as he told her, "I can't spend the night with you, Hermione." Both of his hands closed behind her, in the small of her back. "I'm dreading all kinds of things waiting for me at home during the holidays, scared I might not survive to the new year. Tonight, I might be too desperate to be closer than ever to you, maybe for the last time. Who knows but I may talk myself into believing the purity clause doesn't matter anymore."

"I won't let us. There must be something..."

He finally smiled. "Are you the one proposing to me now? You've dressed up for it and all."

She closed her eyes and tipped her forehead against his chin. "That's not going to work either, Malfoy."

Almost soundlessly, they were laughing together.

"I'm well enough, Granger. Go to the party, like a good junior Order of the Phoenix girl," Draco said. "Blaise confirmed a photographer from the Daily Prophet will be there. Get your photo taken with Potter and McLaggen, so even if someone does suspect the charm is yours, they might remember seeing you dating someone else and dismiss you as another red herring, the way they've left off looking for Pansy."

She rolled her eyes. "Can you stop being cunning for even one moment?"

"No, actually. That's the best thing about me."

She scoffed. "It absolutely is not."

He was leaning forward, speaking against her lips. "No? What is then?"

"I'm not saying…"

"Aren't you?" he said against her neck, blowing to deliberately tickle her.

She squealed and they were tussling together as he tried to cajole her into revealing what she thought was the best thing about him. They had left off fighting and were kissing ardently when far below them, the clock began to strike.

"It's eight o'clock," Hermione moaned, pulling away. "I'm already late for when I said I'd meet Cormac."

"Go on," Draco said. "I'll find you in the morning. But if McLaggen manhandles you, I'll transfigure all his limbs into tentacles."

She raised her eyebrows. "That's an extremely complicated spell."

He kissed her forehead to smooth the lines there. "Yes, and you're not the only one who can do those. The best one, yes, but not the only one."

"Draco," she said, her arms around his neck again, her eyes open and fixed on his. "You must know that I love you."

She saw in his face that he did, and that he was sad all the same. She loved a boy who was sixteen years old, had lived his entire life on the cusp of war, and if his face was truly so readable to her, she must be able to see that he would die for her, kill for her.

He could say none of that out loud. What he could do was kiss her again, and let her go.

* * *

There was no conceivable reason for Severus Snape to miss his esteemed colleague, Horace Slughorn's party. But if he couldn't skip it, he could at least arrive late, waylaid but urgent business with a student of his house. Before any more of them left for the holidays, he needed to speak to Pansy Parkinson.

On his way out of his office, he found her in the nearly empty entrance hall, sitting at the bottom of the marble staircase, nose to nose in heated conversation with Ron Weasley.

Snape approached with stealth, listening.

"And then I said, 'Really, Mother, he's with me, a Parkinson, how can you keep calling him a blood traitor?'"

"I don't mind if she does," Weasley said. "Rather proud of it, actually."

"And then she says, 'Treachery's not only in practices, it's in principles' which sounds nothing like her and must be something someone trained her to say, the ridiculous monkey."

Weasley pushed the lock of hair that had fallen against her cheek behind her ear. "She won't do anything mad like pack you off to Beauxbatons, will she?"

"No, of course not." She said it forcefully enough for her hair to fall back into her face. "My parents' interest in blood loyalty ends where their prejudice against the French begins. They're not like the Malfoys. But they're still a far cry from letting me spend Christmas at the Bungalow."

Ron made a sound between a laugh at how sweet she was and a groan at how frustrating she was. "Pansy, for the last time, you can't go home for Christmas tomorrow. I'm sorry, love. You're in too much danger. You don't have to change your parents' minds about blood purity or convince them to let you stay with us at the Burrow. I'll just stay here with you. It'll be nice. The two of us, practically alone in the castle, getting to know each other much, much better…"

Ron was just about to succeed in connecting with Pansy's lips for a proper snog for the first time since she'd accepted him. This was how Snape knew the time for him to speak had come. "Weasley, Parkinson, In my office - at once."

"It was all me, sir. Parkinson did nothing - "

"Silence, Weasley," Snape intoned. "As Mr. Malfoy has told both of you, a charm discovered in Malfoy Manor this summer was misattributed to Miss Parkinson's making. I can assure you now that, though the identity of the true caster is still - unknown, Miss Parkinson is no longer suspected."

Ron pressed his hand to his heart as he let out a sigh. "So she's safe to go home for the break?"

"Safe?" Snape repeated. "Those most interested in the charm and its caster are capricious, mercurial."

His eyes tracked between the puzzled faces of Ron to Pansy. "It means they may change their minds and we cannot take their abiding disinterest for granted."

Nodding, nodding.

"If, as it seems, the pair of you are in a," he paused to spit out the distasteful word, "romantic relationship, then make it flagrant. The more clear it is to observers that Miss Parkinson is not involved with Draco Malfoy, the more 'safe' you will be. Now go."

Ron rose giddily up the stairs from Snape's office, seizing Pansy by the hand. "Flagrant - you can tell what that means just by the sound of it. It means I'm going to snog the living daylights out of you on the train platform in front of the whole school tomorrow. I mean, if you'll let me."

She let go of his hand to thread her fingers into the hair at his temple, over his ear where it was already starting to grow shaggy again. "I don't kiss you for Snape," she said.

Careful, Ron slid his arms around her waist. "Who do you kiss me for?"

She smiled as his face bent closer. "For me."

* * *

The room did not actually go dark when Hermione left, it merely felt like it did. Draco drew in a deep, dusty breath. Quarter past eight - Borgin would be ready. He tugged on the red velvet cover and the vanishing cabinet loomed into view. It hadn't been made for dark magic but it had a cold, ominous feel to it anyway - an aura Draco knew well from collections kept under glass in his father's study, before the raids began. He stood at the foot of the cabinet, hating himself for the creep of nostalgia settling over him in the presence of its darkness.

Despite its decrepit state, the cabinet's door slid open soundlessly on its hinges when Draco turned its handle. He set the apple on its dark wooden floor, shut the door, and bowed his head. Wordless magic wouldn't do. He drew his wand, extended it toward the closed door, and prepared to speak the incantation. Borgin's letter said it was "Harmonia nectere passus" - short, rhythmic, not difficult.

He began. "Hermion-ia…"

The mispronunciation choked him, sending him staggering backward, away from the tall black cabinet door. Hermione - if he'd miscalculated, and the cabinet was repaired instantly, tonight, it was possible that the Room of Hidden Things could find itself full of Death Eaters mere minutes from now. It was unlikely but not impossible.

He gaped at the closed cabinet door. It was narrow enough that a band of people coming through it would have to come single file, one by one. He wasn't a bad duelist and he could hit each of them with a killing curse until they stopped coming, or at least stun them and send them back.

Couldn't he?

Hermione was in the castle. He had to.

He gripped his wand with a cold, slick hand, cleared his throat and began again. "Harmonia nectere passus."

Though it did not move, the cabinet seemed to shudder, like an old wooden ship borne up on the swell of a tide and back down again. He opened the door. The apple was gone. His breath caught. He had to complete the test, proceed to the second, most dangerous part. He latched the door, aiming his wand again. He would keep it trained on the door not just for the incantation, but for whoever might try to come afterward.

"Harmonia nectere passus."

The same nearly imperceptible shudder ran through the wood of the cabinet. Draco waited. There was no scuffling, no footsteps sounding inside it. He reached out to turn the handle, its greasy metal clicking in the quiet. Inside the cabinet was the apple, now bitten, glistening. And that was all.

* * *

Slughorn's Christmas party was a glittering mess. Harry had come with Luna but Slughorn soon separated them, parading Harry about the room like a prize pig to show all his friends. The newspaper photographer was indeed there, snapping photos of Harry, including one with Hermione, Cormac leaning into her, one hand on her hip as she battled not to cringe away from his touch.

As it turned out, Cormac had not come along as Hermione's friend but as a bragging, boring, soon-to-be tentacled lothario.

"Mistletoe has no place in a society of enlightened gender ideology such as ours," Hermione said ducking behind Harry and smoothing her hair.

"Should have come single," Harry mused.

She huffed. "Aren't you chivalrous?"

"Right. Sorry," Harry said. "Where is he? You want him hexed?"

"I am perfectly capable of hexing him myself," she said, batting Harry's hapless fingers away from her tousled hair. "Just hoping to make it through the evening without having to - "

She was interrupted by a ruckus. Two people large and loud enough to be fully grown men were struggling with each other, coming through the door of Slughorn's office, intruding on the genteel music and conversation, bursting into the warmth and golden light of the holiday lanterns and sparkling dress robes.

One of the intruders was Filch, red-faced and ranting about students sneaking around in the night on the upper floors. The other one was Draco. Seeing him in the yellow light, he looked almost like a stranger to Hermione. His features were always ethereal but what she usually saw in him as angelic now looked worn and wraithish, marred by dark circles under his eyes that she hadn't seen up close, but could discern now, at a distance.

She took a step toward him before Cormac hooked an arm around her waist from behind. She staggered out of his hold but stayed where she stood when she saw Professor Snape billowing in black toward the scene.

Filch claimed Draco had told him he was on his way to the party when he was apprehended, forcing Draco to admit to the entire room that he was "gate-crashing." Hermione winced. It was as embarrassing as it was untrue. She and Snape both knew it. She reckoned Harry probably did too and would soon be clamouring to know what Draco was "really" up to that evening.

Slughorn had consented to let Draco stay but Snape was leading him away, back to the dungeons.

Helpless, Hermione watched them go, her face as full of hurt and longing as Draco's had been full of cold rage as Snape saw him out. At the appearance of sneaky Draco, Harry had no more interest in her. He was withdrawing from the crowd, probably off with his cloak to tail them back to the dungeons. Cormac was amused, actually snickering as he sidled up to her again, one hand on her shoulder, struck with the good luck he'd found in Malfoy making what looked like a jealous ass of himself.

Slughorn was waving for the music to strike back up as Cormac bent to whisper in Hermione's ear. "Well, glad that unpleasantness is out of the way."

She spiked her elbow into his abdomen and bolted for the door.

But there was no sign of them - not Harry, nor Snape, nor Draco. She clicked over the stone floors in her hard-soled party shoes and found no one. Cold and hugging her bare arms, she sat on the plinth of a statue, and cried.

Unable to eat the next morning, Hermione was close to the first person to arrive on the platform at the Hogsmeade station. She watched and watched for Draco. She was still watching when Ron and Pansy made a stir by snogging in front of everyone. She smirked, muttering to herself, "Penance managed."

She was turning away from them, still smiling, when Draco appeared in front of her, almost as if he'd apparated there. In the crowd, he didn't embrace her, but took her hand, hidden in the ends of their sleeves. She looked up at him in the white light of the winter morning. His face was still worn and tired, but the sense of last night's ghostliness was gone. He looked alive.

"You don't have to tell me what's best about me," he said. "I already know. It's maudlin as hell but the best thing about me is that you love me." He took her gloved hand and pressed it over his left arm, through his coat. "It's what will keep me alive this holiday, until I can see you again."


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N: Happy times later still guaranteed! Press on, dear readers!**

On the train steaming away from Hogwarts for Christmas holidays, Pansy Parkinson lay back across two seats with her head in Ron Weasley's lap as he stroked the sleek black hair off her forehead, smirking as he did so, as though anyone would have loved to have been in his place.

"Flagrant enough for them?" Ron beamed down into her face.

"Plenty," Harry answered from the opposite seat.

If he was to be frank, Harry preferred that his friends be in secret relationships. In fact,he thought, secret relationships should be the only ones allowed at school. It would have spared him having to see Ginny Weasley with Dean Thomas all term. At least Hermione and filthy Malfoy were still underground. He shuddered at the thought of what his social life would be like if she showed up in the compartment with Malfoy draped all over herself. But at least then it would be easier to keep an eye on him.

Harry was trying his best not to keep an eye on Ron and Pansy, but as far as being stuck alone with a teenaged couple went, they could have been worse company. Maybe it was thanks to a lifetime as Ginny's older brother that Ron was comfortable relating to Pansy in a way that was more fun than it was cringingly romantic. At the moment, he was weaving tiny plaits into her fringe, teasingly raving about how stunning they looked as she complained and tried to undo them.

They were just getting loud and grabby about it when Padma Patil slid the door of their compartment open. "Up you get, fellow prefects," she said. "Hermione and I have been on duty since Hogsmeade. We're done."

Pansy was sitting up, shaking Ron's handiwork out of her hair. Padma looked the pair of them over with open distaste before she tossed her head and left.

"Good friend of Lavender Brown's," Harry explained.

Ron started to shrink into the corner of his seat but Pansy huffed and said, loud enough for Padma to hear from the corridor before the door clunked shut, "Oh honestly, that was ages ago." She was on her feet, slipping into her robes, leaving, Ron following.

Alone in the compartment, Harry sat with his back against the chilly window pane, fingering the bridge of his nose, wondering if there was any point in getting up to look for Malfoy. Based on the conversation he heard between Snape and Malfoy outside Slughorn's party, Malfoy was definitely working on something - something so awful he was hiding it from Snape himself.

If it was that bad, then Hermione couldn't possibly know anything about it either, otherwise... How did those two keep it all straight?

Relieved of her duties, Hermione was making her way down the train, back to the compartment where she'd seen Harry and Ron, bracing herself for making conversation with Pansy, the only other person of her acquaintance who shared her knowledge of what Draco's mouth tasted like. She bowed with relief when she found Harry alone.

"So where is he?" Harry began, meaning Malfoy, of course.

She was easing a very irate Crookshanks out of his cat carrier. "I haven't seen him since he took me aside and said - something very nice to me at the station." Whatever it was, she still seemed a little flustered by it, smiling into the top of Crookshanks's head. "He'll be sitting with the rest of Slytherin sixth years now, I suppose. The train is closely watched. You know that. Best to just ignore each other and act normal."

Harry snickered darkly at Hermione's concept of normal. "And he's heading back to Malfoy Manor?"

Crookshanks turned in a circle on her lap. "Yes, of course, Harry. He's going home for Christmas like everyone else on the train." She flushed red with regret, remembering too late that Harry was not technically going home. "Sorry."

Harry leaned forward. "There are Death Eaters at his house."

"Yes. It's awful for him."

"Heading home to have Christmas dinner with Death Eaters. Nice."

She stopped scratching Crookshanks's ears. "I hardly see what other alternatives he has. It's not like he's got any say in who his parents take in. And he certainly didn't invite them himself. When you're in a family, you just have to - "

Harry wasn't staying to have the rules of being in a family explained to him. "I need to stretch my legs," he said, sliding down the length of his seat and tugging on the door, rising to turn sharply into the corridor, as if he had somewhere to go. It was then that he crashed hard into Professor Snape.

With any other professor, Harry would have apologized immediately and profusely, but with Snape, all he said was, "Excuse me, professor. I didn't expect to see you on the train."

Snape looked down at him without glaring, without sneering, and with a cool, quiet, unasked for explanation. "On the headmaster's instructions, I am travelling home with Mr. Malfoy, to spend the holidays as his houseguest."

Harry startled. "Why?"

The glare flamed to life. "That does not concern you, Potter."

"Then why come and tell me?"

His voice grew quieter as Harry's grew louder. "To let you know that you may set your concerns aside and enjoy a pleasant holiday with your friends without your usual - vigilance. Your assignment from the headmaster pertains to Professor Slughorn, and since he will NOT be available to you over Christmas, you may stand down."

"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Mr. Potter, whatever it is you are worried about, you may trust that we have it in hand - "

Harry raised himself up into Snape's face. "But you don't, do you? I heard you and Malfoy in the corridor last night, your pleading with him to confide in you. We still have no idea what he's doing."

Snape seized him by the front of his jacket. "For the next few weeks I have access to his home and family life, an opportunity you do not have, and with which you MUST not interfere."

Harry pulled himself free from Snape's grip, and stomped away down the swaying carriage, glancing in each compartment window for Malfoy's white head. He stopped in front of a door with its window blind pulled shut. The sight of it made him freeze, as if petrified, as he was the last time he'd ridden this train, when Draco Malfoy, without wand or incantation, lowered all the blinds of a train car at once, and proceeded to break his nose.

Malfoy was in there, behind the blind even now, getting away with everything.

* * *

Hermione stood on the platform in King's Cross trying to convince herself to walk away and leave Draco for Christmas holidays without another word. Since her parents could not come through the barrier, she was wrangling her luggage alone, as always, Crookshanks protesting about his handling as loudly as he could from inside his carrier.

"It's alright, my darling, beautiful boy. I'll have you safe and out of there soon," she called much more loudly than necessary through the cat carrier. "We'll be together again. Until then, be good."

Across the platform, Draco listened to her sweet talk and grinned into his luggage. His mother hadn't come for him either. It was Snape who was his escort, the pair of them traveling together, moving through the crowd to get clear of the station to where Snape could apparate them on to Wiltshire and the manor.

Hermione hoped to catch Draco's eye one last time before they separated, but couldn't get the timing right. Unable to dawdle any longer, she sighed and darted through the barrier, into the Muggle area of King's Cross.

As she came through, her trunk caught on something, jolting her off balance, sending her scrambling, juggling packages to protect Crookshanks's carrier, letting her trunk crash and skid away from her, grinding to a stop on the dirty floor.

"Hermione, darling!" It was the voice of her father. She tore her eyes away from her scattered belongings to see Dr. Tim Granger, DDS, hurrying towards her. His wife, Dr. Ann Granger, DDS, was at his side, her arms outstretched to take the meowing cat carrier.

"Still alive, Crooksie? Yes, and it's good to have you back too, my girl," she said, kissing Hermione dryly but warmly on the cheek. Then she was talking to someone else, over Hermione's shoulder. "Yes, that's ours. Thank you, young man."

It was Draco. He had rushed to cross the barrier just after her and may have actually been what her trunk had caught on. He had retrieved it and brought it back to her, now handing it to Tim Granger. Hermione saw him as she hoped her parents were seeing him. A tall, fair boy, slim and elegant. His expression was one of quiet fascination, his manner pleasant, his actions helpful. Here in this Muggle world of theirs, where Dark magic and marks and lords were just fairy stories, he was free to be quite simply the most sublime creature she had ever seen.

That was what Hermione was thinking as her father accepted her trunk from Draco as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. "I'll take it, thanks ever so much," Tim Granger was saying, turning back to his family.

The Grangers had dismissed Draco but he lingered, studying their forms and faces, wide-eyed, as Hermione watched him watching all of them. "No, it's no trouble at all," he said, his cheeks flushed red at the sound of his own voice speaking to them.

Tim looked over his shoulder, startled to find the helpful boy still there. And Ann looked sideways at Hermione, who she did not fail to notice was also blushing, her hands wringing the fabric of her beaded bag, as if she were holding them back from grabbing at something.

"Well…" Tim was clearing his throat, about to dismiss Draco again, perhaps more forcefully when Snape appeared.

"This way," Snape said to Draco, rushing past, barely nodding to the Grangers, offering them an icy, "Good day."

Tim pointed a finger at Snape's retreating back. "That's your teacher, isn't it darling? The one you don't get on with."

Hermione smirked. "Yes, that's him. Professor Snape. He taught me - erm - chemistry."

"So odd that your teachers act like they've all got doctoral degrees. Suppose it explains the pricey tuition. Does nothing to explain why they want it paid in gold."

Ann turned to Hermione, one eyebrow raised. "That boy must be one of your people too. Looks like a vampire from a romance novel. Very fancy."

Hermione uttered a thin nervous laugh. "He's not a vampire, just aristocratic."

"Not much difference there, don't you reckon?" Tim laughed.

Ann snorted. "Whatever he is, I do hope he'll spend his holidays somewhere sunny."

Hermione felt like she might burst. "He won't. Mum, that boy is Draco Malfoy." It was the first time she'd spoken his name anywhere in the Muggle world. She heard the unreality of it, here in the Muggle train station. It sounded like a romance novel vampire name too.

Tim frowned at it, craning to take another look at the blond head bobbing away from them through the crowd. "You mean to say that's the boy who tampered with your teeth and completely undermined our orthodontic treatment plan?"

"Yes, dad. That's him."

He was still frowning. "Whatever happened to the big Russian? He was something."

"Bulgarian," Ann corrected. "Viktor."

Hermione laughed. "Oh, dad. He's been gone for ages."

"And the dreamy red-head?" Tim went on.

"You know the Weasleys, Tim," Ann chided him. "They're her second family. She spends all her holidays trying to end up at theirs." Ann arched her brow at Hermione again, linking their arms at the elbow. "But not this time."

Tim Granger shook his head as he hoisted Hermione's trunk. She shrugged through a smile. Her mother grinned coyly, repeating quietly. "Draco Malfoy, is it? I see."

* * *

With a rush and a spin, Draco was standing with Snape not in inner Muggle London but in the lane in front of Malfoy Manor. From outside, the house looked like it always did at Christmastime - the dark roof lightly dusted with snow, holly boughs on every window sill, frost on all of its diamond panes. Snape did not attempt to hold Draco back as he bolted for the doors, stomping inside.

His mother hadn't come to meet him at the train station for the first time in all his comings and goings from school because she'd been contacted by the Auror Office in the morning, informed that her Christmas visit to Azkaban would have to be later that day. Draco had asked her to reschedule it, so she wouldn't have to go alone but the Aurors wouldn't wait.

"Your mistress, where is she?" he asked the house elf trying to coax him out of his wet shoes at the foot of the grand staircase.

She was upstairs, in bed where she'd been ever since the Aurors sent her home through the floo. Since his father was taken away, she hadn't been sleeping in the room they had shared but in a smaller suite, lavish for most homes but positively barren by Malfoy Manor standards. Draco crossed the floor and sank to his knees on the carpet beside the bed. She lay shaking under the coverlet.

"Mother?"

She was awake and calling his name in return, grabbing at his hands. "Draco - Lucius - your father - in there - I can't bear it." She wept against his neck, his arms around her shoulders. "You're a good lad, aren't you Draco? You'll help the Dark Lord bring your father home to us. You'll save our home, our family, our very lives, won't you?"

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "I've been making progress, Mother. Yes."

She was murmuring maniacally against his neck. "The cursed necklace was a disaster. It was my fault. I'm so sorry, darling. But the other project - the rest of it - you have good news to report, don't you Draco? Please, he's impatient - suffering, sick - "

Draco tried to push her back far enough to see her face. "Father is sick?"

She clung to him. "No - well, yes. That's to be expected, where he is. But he is sick as well - him, the Dark Lord. Severus won't tell me how or why but he suffers - "

The door to the bedroom banged open. "Hold your tongue, Cissie." Aunt Bella stood in the doorway looking like something all the holly should have kept out of the house.

Maybe he'd been a prefect too long, but without thinking Draco was shushing his Aunt Bella. He nearly asked her to stop gawking and posing and bring his mother a calming draught, but she didn't look like she'd ever seen one herself. He tried to stand, prying Narcissa's hands from his neck through her sobs and protests.

"Mother, professor Snape is here. I'll fetch him now. He can bring you something to help you sleep."

"Not yet he can't," Bella said, approaching the Malfoys from behind. "Snape is in conference with the Dark Lord. And when he's finished, Draco," she leaned forward, speaking so her breath would tickle the back of her nephew's neck as he sat on the bed, "it will be your turn." She leaned closer, her breath wafting huskily into his ear. "Are you frightened, Cissie's precious baby boy, luscious Lucius's son and heir?"

Draco hid his shudder in the motion of patting his mother on the back. "I have no cause to be scared. I've served the Dark Lord well."

Bellatrix stumbled backward, screeching peals of laughter.

"Oh, get out, Bella. Go!" Narcissa commanded.

Beneath Bellatrix's feet the rug began to slowly roll itself up, conveying her away from the Malfoys, toward the bedroom door. She hopped off the rug but then the floor seemed somehow inclined, tipping her away from the house's masters. "Go and sic your haunted house on me, will you Cissie?"

Narcissa rounded on her sister with hot red eyes. "Not if you leave me in peace to grieve my husband's suffering, I won't."

Bella was screaming. "I knew it. You lack faith in the power of the Dark Lord to right all our wrongs."

"Silence!" Snape was standing in the doorway now, black-robed, furious. "Draco Malfoy, you get your house in order. You must learn to assert yourself when your loved ones become hysterical. Bellatrix you will quit these chambers at once."

She slunk out of the bedroom, blowing one last kiss at Draco and his mother.

Draco let out his breath. "Mother's been to Azkaban today. She needs a calming draught - "

"And I will administer one to her while you meet with the Dark Lord. Immediately."

Narcissa's sniffling stopped.

Draco looked to Snape, terrified. "You're not coming with me?"

Snape approached the bed, succeeding in taking both of Narcissa's hands off of Draco and holding them in his. "No."

She rose to her knees, clawing her way up Snape's sleeve. "He's just a boy, Severus. You swore - "

"I did," he hissed. "And I promise he will survive the night."

Draco stood by his mother's bed, fixed on the improbable sight of her clutching at Severus Snape.

"Listen to me," Snape said, refocusing Draco's attention. "From the moment you open the door to the room where he lies, Draco, your powers of occulmency must be fully engaged."

He scoffed. "Yes, you've already made that point."

Snape wrenched himself free of Narcissa's hold and stepped away from her bedside to whisper to him. "Draco, I am sorry there is nothing more I can do tonight. If you can't keep HER identity hidden from him, expect to see her kidnapped and brought here before morning. In that event I'll send a distress call to the Order for rescue, but otherwise, she will have no chance. The Dark Lord will destroy her to find the relief he seeks."

"Unless the charm protects her, like it does me?" Draco was quick to offer.

Snape bowed his head for a moment, as if gathering strength. "That was not how this kind of spell worked for Lily Evans. Truly, it saved her son but she - as you well know, she is no more."

Draco grabbed a handful of Snape's robes. "But you said to yourself, sir, Hermione's charm is not the same as Mrs. Potter's."

Snape covered Draco's hand with his own. "I said so from a position of despair and disgust, not knowledge. I simply do not know, not yet. I cannot say. I promise nothing."

Draco's face dropped into his hands, his fingers clawing at his own hair. "I never should have let her - I didn't know. I should have known - "

"It's too late for any of that, Draco." Snape's voice was suddenly sharp with impatience.

Draco was muttering to himself. "Time, I've got to get us more time."

"No, do not keep him waiting any longer," Snape was pushing him toward the door. "Go. Go and fight."


	16. Chapter 16

Narcissa Black Malfoy was sobbing, on her knees on her bed, clawing at the arm of Severus Snape as he rooted with his free hand through his satchel for a calming draught. Her only son, Draco, stood beside them, helpless, mustering the courage to open the door and meet the monster at the end of the corridor.

Across the room, the door began to creak open under Peter Pettigrew's silver hand.

_Pettigrew_...

Snape's head snapped up. "Colloportus," he hissed. Pettigrew was thrust out as the door slammed shut.

Snape tipped Narcissa's head back, feeding her the calming draught with a firmness so close to roughness it made Draco yell. But then Snape lowered her to into her pillows with a detached but careful gentleness, her cries growing quiet, exhausted, sleeping.

But there was no rest for Snape, maker of an unbreakable vow. He turned from the bed, lunging across the floor to whisper hotly in Draco's face.

"I have it. Secret Keeper. Already, I know the secret of who has cast the love charm. If I bind you with a Fidelius charm, and make you a keeper of this secret, you will only be able to divulge it willingly. If you cast it correctly, the Dark Lord should not be able to force you."

Malfoy shook his head. "Me? I don't understand. Why not make you my Secret Keeper? It's more my secret than it is yours."

For a moment, Snape said nothing. He stood face to face with Draco, his eyes narrowing. The Fidelius spell was notoriously difficult, rarely performed by underaged wizards, and never under the kind of duress Draco currently faced. But Snape could not agree to do it himself. A Secret Keeper's silence is voluntary. And Snape, in his convoluted personal landscape of twisted, folded alliances, could not trust himself never to volunteer. Draco knew it too.

With the Dark Mark on his arm, Draco had already out-maneuvred the Trace and its limitations on him performing magic outside of school. He could agree to cast the spell, so he did. "Right, let's get started."

"Patience, Draco. Calm yourself, watch, and listen carefully…"

Narcissa sank deeper into her enchanted sleep. Pettigrew rattled and whinged outside the door doubly locked by Snape's spell and Draco's will made manifest through the house over which he was master. And at the base of the staircase, Bellatrix sat at the piano, its lid raised, racing, pounding, ringing through La Campanella over and over again with virtuosic perfection and obsessive repetition, deliberately fighting to keep her sister awake and suffering, remembering Azkaban.

These were the conditions under which Snape and Draco gripped each other by the hand and fought through the incantations and intricate wand work required to make Draco keeper of the secret of Hermione's role as the caster of the love token. When it was finished, Draco snatched his hand away, staggering backward, collapsing against his mother's vanity, his back against the mirror.

"Did I get it? Will it work?"

Snape said nothing but, "Alohomora," and Peter Pettigrew tumbled into the room.

"Master Malfoy," he said, scrambling back onto his feet, "quickly. You will come with me."

Lead like a stranger through a house that had belonged to his family for five hundred years, Draco followed Wormtail along the upstairs corridor to the large, cold suite where the Dark Lord had taken up residence. He came along slowly, lagging behind, causing Wormtail to wait at the door as Draco gathered strength to bring the pitch of his occulmency to a roaring, impenetrable clamour, Secret Keeper or not.

He stepped through the door. There was no rush of legilimens, just a welcome spoken in the loud, high voice of the Dark Lord's menacing perversion of friendliness. "Draco, at last," he said, beckoning him closer to where he stood by the hearth. "How is your mother this evening?"

He fought not to let his occulmency slip as he spoke. "She is resting in Professor Snape's care. She'll be well enough soon."

The Dark Lord hummed. "Poor Narcissa, visitor of Azkaban. Her sister has been less than sympathetic." He chuckled. "Azkaban," he repeated the name like a curse. "A shocking place, at first sight, to be sure. Proof, excellent proof, of the corrupt heart of the current Ministry. That wizards could ever subject one another to such atrocities - " he clucked his tongue. "The nightmare will all be over soon, Draco. We shall set the remainder of our brethren free."

He dropped a hand on Draco's shoulder, its coldness seeping through his jacket.

Draco swallowed through a dry throat. "Yes, my Lord. Soon. We have had a breakthrough in the mending of the vanishing cabinet at Hogwarts."

"Yes, you've successfully transported matter. Next comes the passage of living matter without killing it. Yes, Draco. There are more breakthroughs to come." He twisted with a slow, snakelike grace before sitting in the armchair before the fire, next to a table set with a crystal decanter and a single glass. "And to expedite your success, we must simplify your affairs."

Draco's skin prickled from his scalp to his heels. This was it. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, focused, as if he was not nonplussed as the Dark Lord pressed into his mind. He was never any good at controlling the expression on his face, but he fought to hold it in a neutral calm he did not feel, straining to maintain the internal noise that hid his thoughts.

"Ah, Bella's method," the Dark Lord smiled. "Crude, inelegant, but effective enough. I will teach you further myself. But not today."

His words signaled that his legilimens would abate, but it did not. Primed for the deception, Draco held his ground.

"What is it you are hiding?" the Dark Lord mused.

Draco let an image bob out of the maelstrom of his resistance - a distraction, interesting, disturbing but tangential. It was an image he had just seen, that of his mother and Snape together on the bed, his mother on her knees, her hands tangled in Snape's robes, her face raised to his, her lips parted and desperate as Snape leaned over her. It was just to administer the calming draught, but Draco didn't show the Dark Lord that.

The Dark Lord laughed low in his throat. "There is no better servant than Severus. Surely, Draco, you wouldn't grudge him a fine, wealthy woman as a reward for his genius and his loyalty, in the end."

Draco said nothing, holding the image in the front of his mind until the Dark Lord's legilmency withdrew.

"Accept what you cannot change, my chosen boy," he began again. "And now you must tell me the name of your witch, the one who had marked your arm."

His mouth was almost too dry to speak. "She's an insignificant girl, nothing in the face of my lord's power."

The Dark Lord scratched at his wand hand. "She is an irritant for me, and a weakness for you. Do not discount my words. Do not be sentimental, young Malfoy. Love is nothing real. Just as I have provided another, better match for your bereft mother, I will also provide a better match for you. Whoever you want, no medieval restrictions on your appetites, unfettered power over her - or him."

Medieval restrictions - did he know?

Draco kept silent as the Dark Lord studied his face.

"Name the witch."

Nothing.

He drew his wand, twirling it in his fingertips. "Master Malfoy, I am a collector of rare and beautiful heirlooms - emblems of pure-blood wizarding history. Did you know?"

Draco shook his head.

"Yes, when I collected your father, he was not much older than you. A living treasure himself, a moving, breathing tribute to the beauty of pure magical lineage. Have you forgotten him already - the lines of your father's face, before his troubles, the clarity of his eyes? No, of course you haven't. You see it yourself in every mirror, pane of glass, pool of water."

He moved his hand through the air before him, as if caressing Draco's face, or that of Lucius, many years ago. "My dear boy, do not force me to damage my collection any further. Rather, let us be civilized. Name the witch."

"My lord, I would keep her secret."

"You will not."

Above their heads, the chandelier on the ceiling began to rattle, crystal and silver jangling together in the still air of the room. From beneath the plaster of the walls and ceiling came the faint sounds of moaning stones and timbers.

The Dark Lord smirked. "Malfoy Manor is indeed an exceptional house. I hear you, Draco, your fear and desire tearing at these old stones. Call it off at once, or I shall raze this house to the ground with my own powers of destruction. Your mother will be destroyed in her bed along with it, which would be a shame for you and your professor. And notwithstanding all of that, Draco, you and I, we would simply continue this interview elsewhere."

Draco took a deep breath, willing the house not to crush the Death Eater vermin that had infested it. The rattling and groaning slowed and then silenced.

The Dark Lord nodded, lifting the crystal stopper from the decanter at his elbow and filling the glass. "You will drink this," he said. "Veratiserum. And then you will name the witch."

"My Lord," Draco began, a quaver in his voice, his hands shaking. "Destroying the girl does nothing to give you entrance to Hogwarts. Only the repair of the vanishing cabinet can accomplish that. And if the girl is identified and harmed, I - I will not complete the repair. I will refuse."

With a loud clink just short of a shatter, the Dark Lord dropped the crystal stopper back into the decanter. "You are pristine and lovely but not so precious as to be irreplaceable, Master Malfoy. If you refuse your task, another student will gladly rush in to take your place. Nott's child is capable enough and he has nearly as much at stake."

"My lord, the cabinet is hidden. It's no longer sitting dormant and unguarded in a corridor. I have hidden it and no other student knows where."

"We shall find it."

He bowed his head but shook it. "You will not. What's hidden in Hogwarts remains hidden."

"We shall see." The Dark Lord raised the glass. "Drink."

Draco edged forward, close enough to take the glass and toss the potion down his throat. He set the empty glass on the table and stepped back again.

"Name the witch."

In barely a whisper: "I refuse."

The Dark Lord swatted the glass, smashing it against the hearth. "How?" His anger had gone from cold to white hot. Draco stood drenched in sweat, his breaths shallow as he waited. The Dark Lord was rising from his chair, his wand drawn.

"_Crucio_!"

The sick green blast rocked Draco backwards. He braced himself for the shock of pain, jaw clenched, eyes closed. It never came. The Fidelius charm protected him from torture meant to extract his secret. Still swamped in green light, he stood silently before the Dark Lord.

It was coming together. "Fidelius," the Dark Lord spat. "You have yet another accomplice."

He was advancing on Draco, knowing he could not extract the secret from him, knowing he needed to preserve him to ensure getting into Hogwarts through the cabinet, but mad with a lust to hurt him all the same.

His hand clawed toward the boy, like a talon scratching against his already scarred left arm. He gripped Draco's wrist, exposed the Dark Mark, bearing down on it with more green fire from his wand.

Beneath the black scar tissue, blue light flashed in Draco's skin, Hermione's charm. The Dark Lord called out - partly in satisfaction for having revealed it, partly in horror that it was still so strong and bright. In the blur of light and noise, something else flared, from beneath his own skin. Draco had hardly seen it before the Dark Lord's cries grew louder, agonizingly shrill, and he threw Draco away from him, sending him crashing into the broken glass on the floor.

The Dark Lord stood with his back to him, facing the fire, hissing over his shoulder. "You will finish mending the vanishing cabinet before summer begins or your mother will die, your father will die, you will die."

Draco was crawling toward the door, his path marked with his own bloody handprints smeared across the floor.

"Get out of my sight. And send Severus."

* * *

Hermione stood over a sink of wet, brown potato peelings in her childhood house in Heathgate. The peelings fell away in long, thin swaths, not unlike ringlets. Her parents had invited Tim's relatives for a Christmas dinner, all of them would arrive soon, raving about what a woman Hermione had become, giving her tips on controlling her wild Granger hair - hot, slimy hair treatments that needed to be started before 5am or else simpler solutions of cutting all of it back to her scalp.

She adored them but would keep her hair anyway. That's what she decided as she smiled over the potato skin ringlets, thinking of Draco's fingers tangled in her curls. Potatoes - what would he say if she told him even peeling potatoes reminded her of him? She laughed. He'd hate it.

A pot of stewing turkey giblets boiled over on the cooker. Her mother called out for Hermione to lower the heat. She lifted her head, took a single step toward the stove. The kitchen was growing fuzzy and dark around its edges. The darkness moved inward, closing around the centre of her vision, like a scene change in a silent movie.

Only it wasn't silent. Hermione's mother's voice was speaking in the room now, uncommonly high and frightened, speaking English that Hermione was too detached to understand. Blue light flashed inside her eyes, fast, not long enough for her to know if she'd truly seen Draco in it, or merely wished to, before the light was gone.

Everything faded to black.

* * *

Professor Snape returned to the bedroom where Draco lay with his head on his mother's stomach as she slept. Snape's face was a sickly green and there might have been a tremble in his hands as he repacked his satchel, tucking away the ingredients for the poultice he'd applied not just to the Dark Lord's palm but his entire hand from wrist to fingertips.

"We must go," he said.

Draco was only too happy to hear it, sitting up, shaking his mother awake.

"Not her," Snape said. "She must remain here, with them."

All signs of relief left Draco's face. "As their hostage?"

"As their hostess. Do not argue, Draco. It has never been more true that your lives hang by a thread."

Snape moved to open the door, making for the outside of the Manor, where he could apparate them away.

"Professor Snape," Draco called him back. "If I can do spells without the Trace, can I also apparate without a license? If I can, then I can get us directly outside, and spare us a walk past Aunt Bella on our way out. I know you can't apparate within Malfoy Manor, but I - "

"Stop showing off, Draco, and do it."


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: Okay, now it's truly embarrassing how often I update. But I need to know what happens in this story and I can't do that unless I write it. I am La Campanella.**

Hermione awakened propped up by another living human on the Grangers' kitchen floor. The air in the room was faintly smoky with the greasy water that had boiled over onto the top of the cooker. The electric lights overhead seemed harsh and stinging. Sound was returning to her ears as if it was washing back into her brain like a tide washing over gravel. The sound was her mother's voice, and it was coming from the body holding her torso up off the linoleum.

"Hermione, darling, what's happened? You gave us a fright. One moment I was calling to you about the cooking and the next..."

Her father was standing over them, having rushed in without setting down his glass of claret, bobbing his head in front of the light hanging from the ceiling, watching her pupils dilate.

She had passed out for a matter of seconds, but it felt as if it could have been days. It had happened in a blast of frantic piano music, the smell of narcissus flowers, and the flash of a familiar blue light behind her eyes. The scent and the music portended danger, but the light was love - him. She didn't know how it could have happened without her, but Draco's love charm had been activated, called into service. And at that moment, the magic of the charm had drawn strength from her, shaking her to her very centre, enough that, for an instant, she had fallen unconscious.

"Is anyone else here?" she asked, straining to sit up, to see if Draco was there, and if he was alright.

Her parents assumed she meant the expected dinner guests and assured her they were alone.

Something had happened - changed. But all she would tell her parents was, "I'm alright. Must have lost my balance and tripped."

Ann was trying to palpate her skull through her hair. "I didn't see you hit your head. How does it feel to you?"

Hermione pressed her fingers to her temples. "No pain at all. I'm just a little woozy. Sorry for the scare. Best get up before the guests arrive."

She leaned away from her mother, showing them she was able to sit up on her own, but they still refused to let her stand. She sat on the floor between her parents, sipping the glass of orange juice they insisted she take, fielding awkward questions.

No, she hadn't been skipping meals recently.

Yes, she had been staying up late but so were all of the NEWT students, just like her parents had done leading up to their A-Levels, their sights set on dental school.

No, she didn't think she needed to relinquish her prefect duties to spend more time caring for herself.

Yes, the air was fresher at school in Scotland than at home in London.

"What about stress?" Ann probed. "There have been some terrible but very odd accidents throughout the city recently. It's not trouble with - your people, is it?"

"Every society has political strife," Hermione answered truthfully. "You needn't worry," she added, much less truthfully. The truth was she was barely holding back the frantic urge to find the nearest Floo and fling herself into Malfoy Manor, of such a thing was even possible, to fix whatever had gone wrong. But that would be ridiculously reckless - a Harry stunt. And afterall, Snape was there, and Madam Malfoy was still a witch of some acclaim, and then there was Draco himself. For the moment, she had to trust them to be strong and wise in the face of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange's wicked madness.

The most urgent job for her right now was to stay undiscovered as the charm caster, and to keep her parents separate from it all.

There was a gap in the Grangers' questioning, an uncomfortable silence wherein Ann looked at Tim over the top of Hermione's head far too knowingly. Something passed between them, coursing through Tim like a shudder Hermione couldn't help but see. Perhaps it was already too late to keep them separate from her real life. She braced herself for what was to come.

Her apprehension grew when Ann spoke with her falsely chipper dentist's voice. "Tim, dear, fetch that home blood pressure monitor from the bathroom, would you? Underneath the sink. You may have to dig."

He couldn't have agreed to leave any quicker, virtually scrambling out of the room. Ann extended an arm to Hermione and raised her onto a kitchen chair. She took a deep breath and folded her hands together on the tabletop before she began. "Now, about this Drago Malcolm - "

"Draco Malfoy."

"That's it. You and he - how involved are you? It's not a mere crush - "

"No, Mum, not at all."

"So I'm right to assume your relationship with him is - physical."

"It has many dimensions - "

"Including physical."

Hermione bowed over the table, laughing with relief. THIS was her parents' burning anxiety about events in wizarding Britain? "Yes, Mum. I'm seventeen. It's the age of majority in wizarding society. It's alright."

"Seventeen. It bloody well - " Ann stopped herself, drew in another deep breath, refolded her hands. "Hermione, you must be frank with us if we're about to be grandparents. You'll need regular medical attention - "

"Grandparents?"

"Yes, low blood pressure and lightheadedness are not uncommon in pregnancies, even young, healthy ones - "

"Mum, I am not pregnant. I can't be. Draco and I - we're together, but not like that."

"Thank all that's holy!" It was Tim, bawling from the doorway, squeezing the bulb of a sphygmomanometer rather cruelly. "We've hardly had a chance to be parents to you these past six years, let alone grandparents."

"Dad, stop."

"Quiet, Hermione," Ann was saying. "You musn't talk while having your blood pressure read."

Hermione obediently rolled up her sleeve, even as she protested, "Well, the reading is going to be awry now anyway, with the pair of you sat here accusing me of being pregnant."

"Who's accusing?" Tim said, strapping her arm into the blood pressure cuff.

"And tell me," Ann went on, "exactly what kind of access does this school serving legally adult students give you to proper contraceptives? And I do mean proper medical contraceptives, not a lot of dodgy Latin and wishing on stars."

"Mum, it's not like that." Hermione sat back as the machine's display flashed with a perfectly normal blood pressure. "And it's not as though I don't know about Mug-, about non-magical contraception. I read a whole book on it when I was ten, remember?"

Ann loosed the cuff. "Maybe so, but you're not going back to that school until you see a doctor and get something to protect your future, and Declan Malfort's too."

"Draco Malfoy!"

"Yes, you'll meet him again with The Pill in hand. Age of majority my eye…"

Hermione was about to object, to do what she always did whenever her parents expressed concern that the things they wanted for her were absent from the wizarding world. But then she paused. Her situation was unpredictable. Voldemort was back, tormenting Draco's family, stalking the headmaster. Lives were on the line and it wasn't impossible that she could end up having to say yes to Draco, marrying him, and needing to prevent becoming a mother whilst still at school.

She had read about contraceptive charms from a book in the library, but would that be adequate? What was it that McGonagall had told her when she first matched her with Draco for dance lessons before the Yule Ball - not everything is best learned from a book? But who did she have to learn it from if not a book?

She thought of the adult witches in her life. Tonks was in and out of Hogwarts quite a lot this year, but she seemed to be pining for someone so it probably wasn't a good time. Professor McGonagall hadn't been married as a young person, so her knowledge might be as academic as Hermione's. Molly Weasley might react poorly to such questions, worried they might have something to do with Ron - or worried that they might not. Either way, she was not an option, and not just because, by appearances, Molly may never have mastered contraceptive charms herself. Madam Pomfrey could tell her something, but her contact with Hermione had never been personal. A talk with her would be just as clinical as a visit to her mother's doctor. So why not start at her mother's doctor, to put her parents' minds at ease, at the very least?

"Fine, Mum. I still say I don't need it, but if you need me to have it, call the doctor."

* * *

Draco's first apparation outside of a class, which was also his first attempt conveying a side-along apparation ever, went as well as could be expected. His turn into the maneuvre was a beautiful (if excessive) pirouette executed in the centre of the floor of his mother's bedroom. But he should have done more to prepare Snape instead of leaving him tripping to keep up and keep hold of his arm. As it happened, the pair of them landed on the gravel outside the manor skidding in a circle, barely staying on their feet.

Snape flung Draco's arm back at him. "That will not happen again."

"Sorry, sir." The December night was bitingly cold. Draco hugged his jacket around himself, pulling his hands inside his sleeves.

"I suppose you'll have to be returned to school," Snape said. "You may be brought back here if his anger abates - or if it fails to abate enough."

He shook his head. "If I'm at school, won't he be expecting me to be mending the cabinet? That's no way to buy us time while we figure out what just happened. There must be somewhere else..."

"Spare me the lovesick excuses, Draco. You will not convince me to take you to her. Bringing you to her home would be the same as leading the Dark Lord to her door. You must be kept somewhere the Dark Lord has nothing to gain by knowing, or else somewhere unplottable." A new light appeared in an upper window of the Manor. Snape snagged Draco's collar and tugged him down the lane, away from the house.

"Your people - your other people - they must have someone who could take me in," Draco said, twisting free. "I mean, what's the opposite of Malfoy Manor?"

Snape smirked. "That would be a house known as the Burrow, home to a large family of Weasleys."

Draco shrank slightly into the hedge at his back.

Snape advanced toward him. "You performed so well with the Dark Lord just now, Draco. Are you not cunning enough to convince him that you could be spending a warm holiday with your chums Potter and Weasley?"

Draco blinked. "There must be somewhere else. Where do you live?"

"I am expected back here before tomorrow morning. Both the Dark Lord and the headmaster require my services at Malfoy Manor, as does your mother. And if you were to stay alone, in my home - I could not guarantee - your - safety there."

Draco understood charmed houses well, and he hung his head. He didn't mean to make himself into the picture of a pathetic, beautiful, loved child driven out of his home in winter, but he did anyway. Snape let out a long sigh. "Take my arm."

With no tripping or skidding, they were in London, Islington, on a dark Muggle street. "Behold the second of your secrets for the evening," Snape said. The brick and stone of the row of houses before them began to grind and shift, making way for one more home, far dirtier and more decrepit than its Muggle neighbours. Draco's mother would have known the place well, from her childhood when it belonged to her Aunt Walburga. It was another house of Black, 12 Grimmauld Place.

"The last of your family to live here was your mother's late cousin, Sirius Black," Snape explained. "Whether your mother or her sisters have any hold on this place or not, no one knows. If your Aunt Bella appears, remain calm. Quietly disapparate, as you did before, go back to Hogsmeade and to the school. Notify me at once."

They were through the door, into a dusty hall smelling of mould. A large portrait of a sick old woman hung on the wall. Draco couldn't help but gape at it. The face became animated as the door creaked shut. It was sneering at Snape, teeth bared, as if about to scream at him. But then it noticed Draco and broke into exultant laughter.

"At last!" the portrait shrieked. "At long last, a true heir of the house of Black. Come to purge us of the vermin, the years of waste and rot, the mud…"

"Do not dally, Draco," Snape said, nudging him further inside.

From the kitchen door, at knee-height, the oldest, most tattered house elf Draco had ever seen was shuffling out to meet them. Snape spoke to him. "Kreacher, this is our guest, Mr. - "

"This is our master," the elf interrupted. "Young Master Black."

Draco began to argue.

"However you like it, Kreacher," Snape said shortly. "It does not matter in the least. See that he is warm and fed and tell no one he is here." Snape was pulling on a pair of gloves as if he was about to leave at once.

Draco clutched at the tails of his coat as he spun away. "Sir, please - where are you going? Back to the Manor?"

"Eventually."

"But not directly," Draco nodded. "You're going to her first. To see that she wasn't hurt when - not like Potter's - I mean, sorry, sir. But please tell me. I understand I can't come along, but I must know."

Snape flashed an angry look at him but spoke coolly. "Since I am already in London, I will take this opportunity to visit a very accomplished, very anxious, one could say, insufferable student who was devastated this summer to find she had received an OWL grade of Outstanding in every class except the one which I now teach. I have long been meaning to discuss the need for maintaining realistic expectations of ourselves with this student and her parents, particularly as they have been through neither the OWL nor the NEWT testing processes themselves. That is who I will visit tonight and why. Do you understand, Mr. Malfoy?"

Draco's posture slackened, relieved, nodding since he couldn't trust himself to keep from sayIng something that would ruin everything.

Snape strode to the door, stopping just shy of opening it. He met Draco's eye along the length of the hall, and as he looked at him, Snape's chest swelled a little, feeling something, perhaps pride. "Get some rest, Draco. It is well-deserved."

* * *

Tim Granger was red-faced and laughing loudly, another glass of claret in his hand, his sisters and their families wined and dined, settled into his house for the night, the holidays upon them, when a loud knock sounded on the front door. Tim opened it to find a barely familiar, barely friendly face.

With far too much jolly shouting, Tim welcomed Severus Snape into the hall. He turned to fetch Ann, calling more loudly than he realized, "It's our girl's teacher, the nasty one from the station, he's here."

"Dad, please," Hermione said tagging along with Ann.

For the first time in her memory, Professor Snape looked something like pleased to see her. "You're looking well, Miss Granger."

She blinked. "Thank you, sir."

"Professor Snape," Ann said, waving him into the study with grand, sweeping waves of her arms. "I would like a word about student hygiene and reproductive health at Hogwarts."

"Mum, no. Not tonight - "

"Do sit down," Tim was saying. "Refreshment? 'Tis the season, and all that."

"Thank you, no," Snape said, remaining standing. "You are kind. But as I have arrived unannounced, and I can see you are indisposed, it would be wrong of me to stay."

"Women's health," Ann was saying, as if launching into prepared remarks, "is paramount in a civilizationalized society - "

"Yes," Tim interrupted. "Why just today, our Hermione had a bad spell in the kitchen. Laid her out on the floor for half a moment. That school of yours has sent her back to us exhausted, weak as a baby."

"Hush, Timothy," Ann hurried, waving her arms in his face. "Not only that, it has sent her back to us pining for Dieter Mandrake."

Snape frowned. "Draco Malfoy?"

"Is he alright, Professor?" Hermione burst in. "Draco - did something happen to him today? Any trouble with his houseguests?"

Snape narrowed his eyes. "Yes. But he weathered it well and will be spending the rest of his holidays elsewhere - the former headquarters. And you, Miss Granger, I share your parents' concerns about your health and safety and will see to it they are addressed with the utmost seriousness when term recommences. Are you quite well, after your 'bad spell'?"

She answered with a slow nod. "It was a shock, but it's over now."

"Let us hope so." He turned back to the Granger parents, taking his leave, cutting short any more sloppy attempts at policy discussions. "Doctors Granger," he said with a slight bow, "I do apologize again for my interruption. We shall speak again soon."

And to a chorus of "Happy Christmas" wishes, Snape stepped back into the street.

* * *

Draco lay on the sofa in the drawing room of 12 Grimmauld Place, a low, smoky fire burning on the hearth, a half-eaten meal of stew and bread still on the table at his side. He felt filthy, worn out, ages older than he had been when he'd got out of his bed in the Slytherin dungeon that morning. He'd had to treat his own cut hands and they were still stinging slightly beneath the bandages he'd wrapped around them. There was nothing good to stay awake for, but he wasn't sleeping.

His feelings were a mess, cycling from joy at having survived his defiance of the Dark Lord with both his mother and Hermione still alive, but also horror at what the future would bring. In the Dark Lord's chambers, Draco had fired all of his tricks at once. What did he have left to defend anyone with? And so much of it was thanks to Snape. He felt so grateful to his teacher, it moved him almost to tears, but at the same time, he wasn't sure how much he could trust him.

Foremost among his feelings was loneliness. There was no one here, in this miserable house. There was a foul portrait and a fouler house elf to serve her. Otherwise, no one even knew he was here. He could die in the night, shed his hair and flesh onto this sofa, asphyxiated by the bad fireplace or any number of other things, and he would just slip away, out of history, lost.

He turned over on the sofa, scolding himself for his melancholy. When Christmas was over, he would return to school. Hermione would be there. The damnable cabinet would be there too, but if she was there, they'd figure out what to do. He had to tell her about it now. And even if they didn't think of anything, they'd be together.

Though for now, they were not.

Even with his eyes still open in the low firelight, he heard it before he saw it - entering the house with a sound like wind, or water, rushing down the chimney, turning the flames a silvery white. He sat up on the sofa, too overwhelmed to even fumble for his wand. The silver flames seemed to blow out of the hearth and into the room, swirling in a loop around the walls, against the floor and ceiling, moving inward until they had coiled around him. There was a sensation of being bathed in warm water, the same temperature as his own blood. And in the lights he saw a creature - long and sinuous, with sleek fur, pawing at the air as if swimming through it.

"Hermione!"

It was her Patronus. She had described it to him before but he'd never seen it, though now that it was swimming around and over him, it was unmistakable. It felt like her - her touch, her breath, her love. Its appearance meant she was safe, brilliant as always, powerful, and longing for him the same way he was desperate for some sign of her. He opened his arms to the light and magic, sad as it faded, but still, silent, falling to sleep.


	18. Chapter 18

Hermione took the bus.

Even with Boxing Day's reduced holiday public transport service, it wasn't very far and it wasn't very difficult to make it through London from the Grangers' house to Grimmauld Place. While her parents were still in bed, she wrote them a note saying she was meeting friends for the day, and then slipped out into the blue lit morning.

Christmas had been quiet. Her aunts didn't overstay their welcomes, leaving her to pass most of the holiday with just her parents, who were a little weary but, content to be through with all their festive cooking, eating, and drinking. Hermione had hoped Snape would come back to tell her exactly what had happened to prompt Draco to move from Malfoy Manor to an unplottable former safehouse, but no news came. Imagining the possibilities was making her mad. Uneasy silence - it was always this way when it came to the Order.

She'd done what she could to keep communication flowing on her own, sending her patronus streaming from her upstairs bedroom window, flickering out over London like Aurora Borealis, but quickly vanishing from sight in the light pollution of the city. Patronuses were mystical, romantic means of expression but they didn't send receipts. She had no idea if Draco had received her message or not. For all she knew, he might have been moved on to somewhere else already.

It was not to be borne.

She stepped off the bus in Islington, onto pavement still glittering with morning frost, and in the sleepy, early holiday morning, 12 Grimmauld Place revealed itself to her. It was shabby as ever but sadder, tragic and lifeless now Sirius was gone.

With great care, her wand drawn, she passed through the door, already flinching against the wave of profanity she knew to expect to come crashing out of Walburga Black's portrait at the sight of her. Sure enough…

"Back again, is she? Filthy mudblood, bold as you please, here in our hall. Putrid scum - shameless, showing her face here after luring our Sirius to his death. Disgusting - "

It had never been like this before. This abuse was beyond name-calling and noise. This was an attack with a truly formidable weapon: Hermione's own grief, not baseless prejudice, something real. She hadn't expected the filthy old portrait to have it in it. Hermione covered her ears with her hands, bowed her head, and clipped down the hall, eager to get behind the drawing room door and slam it.

She didn't hear Draco half running, half sliding down the stairs. Still in the hall, he caught her in his arms and spun the both of them around to face the portrait. "Aunt Walburga, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

The portrait snarled. "Do not touch her."

"I will. And you ought to have some manners, Aunt Walburga. A lady of your calibre speaking to my guest like this - it's beneath you. I won't abide it."

She shrieked. "My darling boy, don't you know what she is?"

"Yes. And I thought we understood one another, Aunt Walburga, after all our talks these past few days. I'm disappointed in you. I won't be able to sit and visit with you anymore if you're going to curse and swear at my guests, and I do mean all of my guests. Please, Auntie."

The face in the portrait turned away, vanishing behind the heavy frame with the sound of bitter weeping.

Once she was gone, Draco looked down at Hermione, still held against him in his arms, staring wonderingly up at him as she had been since the moment he appeared.

"It's you," she said, her arms around his neck, pulling his face to hers. She kissed him - his mouth first, deep and warm, and then the rest of his face, item by item, cheeks, nose, eyelids, forehead, as he tried to speak.

"You found me," he said, walking her backwards into the drawing room. "It's like a miracle."

She let herself be led, eyes barely open as she continued to kiss his face. "No, it's just a tip from Snape and the Muggle bus system."

He kicked the door closed to keep Kreacher from spying, lifted her into his arms and carried her to the sofa, sitting her down across his lap. She left off kissing him and tucked her face into the crook of his neck, dragging in a deep breath full of the scent of his skin. He reached into her hair, caressing her face, and that was when she noticed the scabbed cuts on his palm. She took his hand in hers, kissed it gently.

"What's this?"

"Cut it on some broken glass."

"Accidentally?"

He shrugged. "I suppose."

She sighed, reaching for her bag and the dittany she'd brought with her just in case.

"Draco, what happened at home that was so bad you couldn't stay there for even a day? Is your mother - "

"She's unhurt," he said, hissing a little as the medicine seeped into his skin. "Still recovering from her first visit to Azkaban, still hosting You-know-who, but she's not in any immediate danger. Neither am I, really. He's angry with me, but he still finds me useful enough to keep alive."

Hermione set her medicine aside, her fingers combing through his hair. "Tell me what happened."

He told her their charm was more than a nuisance for the Dark Lord. It was an obsession, and he was now hunting Hermione as a means of getting rid of it.

"The three of us are linked in some kind of twisted magical triad. When you summon the charm, it hurts him. And when he summons the charm," he squeezed both of her hands in his. "Hermione, what happens to you when he does it?"

She swallowed. "That's what he must have been doing when I fainted in our kitchen the same night you went home. I wasn't damaged, but it did lose consciousness."

Draco hugged her hard against himself. "You weren't damaged because he barely got it to flare. If he uncovered it fully, if he kept it visible for longer - my stars, Hermione, what could he do to you?"

She cradled his head in her arms, pressing kisses against his hair. "He can't use it to kill me in a sneak attack. I'm almost sure of that," she said. "If it is like Harry's mother's spell - and I do believe it is, no matter what Snape says - then ultimately, its protection reaches full power only through a willing sacrifice. If I don't know you're in danger, I can't use my will to sacrifice myself for you."

He sat up straight. "Snape admitted it's the same. That's not good. You have to promise me you'll never do that. Don't sacrifice yourself for me. I wouldn't have let you mark me if I knew it might put you in a position to have to choose between my life and your own."

She rose to her knees, straddling his lap but keeping herself too high to press her pelvis into his. She only wanted to look him in the eyes, to press their foreheads together as she said, "We won't let it come to that, Draco. We're going to find another way out."

"You haven't promised."

"No, and I won't."

"Hermione - "

She hushed him with a kiss, leaning into him, until the softness of her chest against his clavicle, the pull of his hands against her hips, became too much, the racing of his pulse building to a throbbing, deep and demanding, and he broke away with a moan, saying only, "The monks."

She understood and shifted to sit beside him, draping his arm around her shoulders.

Draco sat regaining his composure, and calculating. "I never seem to be hurt by the charm. You're not hurt when you summon it yourself. But he is hurt every time, whether it's him who summons the charm or not. He wouldn't let me see his wand hand last time. It must have been bad."

She hummed, agreeing. "It's like our charm is an immune system and he's a virus it fights to ward off."

Draco looked down at her, puzzled.

"Immune system," she repeated. "It's a Muggle interpretation of human physiology - how the body reacts to disease. My parents deal only with teeth but they're still scientists. They have lots of books on the body and I've read them all."

"Teeth?"

"Yes, have you seen your aunt's teeth? She could use a good afternoon or two at a dental surgery."

Draco still looked confused. "Don't worry about teeth," she said. "What I'm saying is, if we can get close to the Dark Lord and I summon the charm myself, maybe we can - end this."

Draco sat up, alarmed, withdrawing his arm. "End what? The entire Death Eater uprising?"

She blinked. "Well, why not?"

"Hermione, even when Potter's mother died, it still just knocked the Dark Lord back for a decade. He wasn't destroyed for long. It didn't truly end anything. Just ask Potter."

She gaped at him. "I don't have to ask him, I've been there - "

"I know. I'm sorry. I don't mean to - "

"Look," she said, "Dumbledore is working on a solution right now. He's got Harry helping, though Harry's still not exactly sure with what. They'll work it out. They will, with a bit more time. Time we might be able to buy for them, or somehow make it easier for them, more peaceful, more likely to succeed. At the very least, we could get Voldemort out of your house, for stars' sake."

Draco took both of her hands in his. "You are a darling to want to rescue me. But you don't know what he's like, face to face. Every time he's come for Potter, you haven't been around or alert for it. I'm not," he hurried, "I'm not trying to discount your contributions to keeping Potter alive through all of it but - when you talk about confronting the Dark Lord, getting in range to see if you can seriously wound him with your charm, you don't understand what a terrifying prospect that truly is."

His hands were shaking, something he didn't realize until she raised them in front of them to kiss them. As he talked about the Dark Lord, he had become cold, his skin slick, feeling sick to his stomach, breathless. Seeing him this way was frightening for her, so frightening she stopped arguing and called for Kreacher to bring some tea. They would speak again about using the charm against the Dark Lord, in spite of danger and trauma. But not today.

She stood up from the sofa and eased Draco onto his back on the musty cushions. Kneeling on the rug beside him, she smoothed his hair from his forehead.

Kreacher came and went, muttering and scowling.

"What happened, Draco?" she said, pressing the teacup into his hand. "You still haven't told me everything. When he took you and summoned the charm - what else did he do?"

He set the tea back down on the table, dropped his arm over his eyes, and told her about his short stay at Malfoy Manor - the hysteria of his mother, his violation by legilimens, being questioned and forced to take veritaserm, the Dark Lord's threats, the taunting about giving his mother to Snape, talking about his father like an animal in a zoo, and the Fidelius spell that had enraged him enough to attack Draco with his wand before throwing him onto the glass. He held back nothing but an explanation of the cabinet. That he would save for when they were back at Hogwarts, and he could show her.

A tear fell from the corner of his eye as he came to the end. She rose to her knees and kissed it without a word, climbing onto the sofa to nestle beside him, the full length of her body pressed against his, enfolded in his arms. "Have you been sleeping well since you came here?" she asked first.

He scoffed. "Not at all, That's when I found the time to make friends with Aunt Walburga's portrait."

Hermione breathed a small laugh. "I've never seen anyone talk to it the way you do. Last time I was here, there was just a lot of hollering back at her and throwing a tarpaulin over the canvass."

"Understandable. It's just a portrait, after all. It can't learn. But we can appeal to the higher virtues of its nature," he said, the final word fading into a yawn. His shaking had stopped, but it left him more exhausted than ever.

She smiled against his shirt. "Shall I lie here and adore you while you sleep?"

He held her tighter. "As long as you don't leave yet, do whatever you like. But it would be nicer for me if you got some sleep too."

"I'm too happy to sleep. Isn't that awful? In spite of everything you've been through over the last few days, I'm still foolishly happy just to be with you. I'll gladly lie here for hours. I even brought some books."

He laughed with closed lips against her forehead. "Of course you did. Oh, and when Kreacher comes in, tell him Young Master Black forbids him to tell anyone you've been here."

She smirked. "His real master is Harry, you know."

"We all know that. But Aunt Walburga is enjoying the play acting and it protects you so let it go, yeah?"

She wondered if she had ever heard Grimmauld Place go as silent as it did when Draco closed his eyes beside her on the sofa. She had never been here without a crowd to meet, plot, laugh, and eat with, without the portrait screeching, or Kreacher's hateful whinging. There was none of that today, in the white winter light in the drawing room. All she could hear at the moment was Draco's breathing.

She pulled a blanket from the back of the sofa and tucked it around them. "Thank you," she said softly, not sure he was still awake.

"Hm?"

She propped herself on one elbow to look at his face, his eyes closed, finally restful. "Draco, you stood up to the thing you fear most because it threatened me. You risked everything. Don't do it again. But understand that I love you more than ever for it."

She bent to kiss him. He was sleepy and warm but still sweetly responsive, too tired to cause much trouble even as she curled a leg over his, and pulling herself as close to him as she could get. As she settled back down onto the cushions, his arms closed around her again.

He breathed into her hair. "Worth it."

* * *

In the evening, she rode the bus back to her parents' house.

"Nice day with friends?" Ann asked somewhat archly as Hermione let herself back into the house.

"Yes. Quiet and relaxing."

"Who did you see?" Ann probed.

Hermione shrugged. "Oh, you know. Only Devon Musgroves."

Ann raised an eyebrow. "Draco Malfoy? Indeed. Well don't book anything for tomorrow," she said. "You'll be seeing the doctor for that prescription."


	19. Chapter 19

Draco stood in the upper window of 12 Grimmauld Place, looking out at a street from which he could not be seen. The street itself was quiet but with the window cracked open to the cold air, he could hear traffic in the distance, the buses Hermione had used to find him and to leave him today. From the high window, he was thinking of his father in Azkaban. Their lives were converging again, and not for the better - somehow never for the better - as both of them stood apart from the world, behind locked doors, unseeable, alone.

Needing to think of something else, Draco's mind went back, to just hours before when Hermione had been here with him. With one arm hooked around his girl, Draco had slept for most of the day as she dozed and read beside him. When he was awake, she had kissed him and held him and talked. From the sofa in the drawing room, they had looked up at the cobwebs on the peeling ceiling, black with mildew in the corners, and agreed that if they ever had a house of their own, it would not be anything like 12 Grimmauld Place.

"You think Potter will ever live here?" he had asked her.

She had frowned. "I don't know. It's strange," she'd said. "My very best friends and I - Ron and Harry - we never speak of more than a few months into the future. I was pining for Ron Weasley for nearly two years, thinking about him almost constantly, and though I could tell you all about the quidditch team he supports, his favourite sweets, the colour of his bedroom curtains, I have no idea what kind of life he wants after school. I know Harry wants to be an Auror someday only because McGonagall made such a fuss over it in front of everyone. But other than that - I have no idea what either of the boys want for themselves when they're adults."

Draco had nodded. "Potter probably just wants to be alive. Maybe that's it - all the uncertainty and danger makes the future too remote to talk about."

Her gaze had drifted across the ceiling, as if looking for something. "It can't be that," she said. "Because things have never been more uncertain than they are now, but I'm lying here talking to you about where I might live in the future. And it feels real, and right."

He had smiled, resting his cheek against her stomach as she lay on the sofa and he sat on the floor. Without lifting his head, he laced his fingers through hers. "So do you accept?" he said. "What I keep offering you, me forever as part of your future - do you accept?"

She had tried to laugh off his proposal, as she always did. But this time, she couldn't quite manage it. Instead she sighed and said, "Not yet."

For the time being, it had been good enough - progress. He'd said, "Let's stay here together, in Potter's manky old house. It can be a bit like when we were locked in the library together in fourth year. We'll just stay here and dance and read and love each other until someone notices we've gone and breaks through the door to drag us out."

She had sat up when he said it. "And that will be in about an hour, when my parents start looking for me for tea."

As if waiting to hear the word, Kreacher had come through the door at that moment, pushing a trolley piled with food. As ordered, he was keeping Draco fed. With Hermione there, Draco had an appetite, eating more of what Kreacher brought than usual.

The food, sleep, and affection were nourishing, but after she'd gone, the darkness settled over him. He thought of her charm in his arm. It used to give him comfort but now it was a fearsome thing, exposing her to harm. It had to be removed. But if the Dark Lord himself couldn't remove it, then who could? Draco needed to get back to Hogwarts, to the restricted section of the library. In all their reading on Mitrian love charms, they'd never looked into how to get rid of it altogether. There had to be a way.

Or maybe it was more important to go back to the Manor, apparate inside unnoticed somehow, find Snape there, and see if he knew that activating the charm harmed Hermione, and why.

Anything would be better than simply sitting here, adrift in an unplottable liminal space.

He turned from the window, coming down the stairs in his heavy black cloak, moving for the door despite knowing that once he left this house, he wouldn't be able to find it again without someone who knew its secret.

"Going somewhere, Draco?" It was Snape, standing at the bottom of the stairs, removing his gloves beside the still empty frame of Walburga Black's portrait.

Draco said nothing but, "Professor…"

Snape scanned him from head to foot. "You're looking - rested." The same could not be said of Snape. He looked as if he hadn't slept since he had left Draco here days before.

Draco shrugged off his cloak. "How is Mother?"

"Better. Only lightly sedated. She sends her - best wishes."

Draco stood nodding on the rug.

"No need to be cagey, Draco. I assume Granger has been here. You've nothing to hide."

"Yes, sir."

Snape was moving toward the kitchen, where Kreacher was fixing him something to eat. Draco followed. "Sir, we need to get rid of this charm on my arm. When the Dark Lord summons it, I'm not hurt but Hermione is. He's involved in it somehow."

"Yes, I know."

Draco was venting as Snape arranged himself at the kitchen table. "I trusted too much in Hermione's skills the night she first inscribed it. It wasn't fair to her, and it's all my fault. She's brilliant, but she was under the influence of all those potions that night in the hospital wing. I knew that and I should have known something like this could have gone wrong. I was out of my mind too, devastated - what with Father..."

He trailed off, his head in his hands as Snape bit into a cold beef sandwich. He chewed, sipped his tea, letting Draco go on uninterrupted.

"And what's with those nutty old monks?" Draco said. "How could they craft a love charm with room for a destructive third party to come tearing through it? Terrible spell. Cruel."

Snape swallowed, dabbed his mouth with a napkin. "You are too harsh, Draco. The imposition of the third party was something neither Miss Granger nor the Brethren of the Exalted Order of Mitrians could have anticipated. It comes down to the Dark Lord himself. He is an unprecedented figure. There's been no one else like him. Due to the lingering effects of soul rending spells of the Dark Lord's own, he was in a singular state the night he attempted to vanquish your charm. If he didn't recognize his own vulnerability, there is no way you nor Granger could have anticipated it. No one could have planned on it."

Draco sat up straight, alarmed. "Soul rending spells - like what?"

Snape took up the second half of his sandwich. "I cannot discuss it with you. The headmaster has made it his exclusive business - his and Potter's. Perhaps he will tell you more when term recommences. Suffice it to say, that by his own doing, the Dark Lord's soul is no longer whole. Meaning that, when it encountered the magic of the Mitrian charm, with its immense power to bond souls, the Dark Lord's already fractured soul could not resist its pull, and it bonded him to the charm. And by extension, it bound him to both of you."

Draco had blanched whiter than ever, leaning on the table to hold himself up. "I bound Hermione to the Dark Lord?"

"After a fashion, yes, you are the tie that binds them to each other."

He groaned into his hands. "Well, why does summoning it hurt her and not me?"

Snape brushed his fingers against each other. "That I cannot say. The Dark Lord has a different status in the charm than the two of you - a lower, weaker one which may be what accounts for the damage he sustains whenever it is summoned. And which certainly accounts for his rage at having brought it upon himself. He cannot accept a position of lower status in any form."

"Have you seen it?" Draco asked. "His damage - what is it?"

Snape looked uneasily about the room but went on. "Mere irritation, at first. Then scarring on the hand that held the wand when he tried to vanquish it from your arm. And when he attacked you with his wand most recently, a stiffness and withering of the hand set in, painful. He is, of course, livid and wants the charm undone in the swiftest, least complicated way."

"By killing the caster, killing Hermione," Draco finished, miserably.

"Yes. Her familiar as well."

It was so absurd, Draco nearly laughed. "Crookshanks?"

"Whatever she calls it," Snape growled. "You would survive. The Dark Lord would as well. And you would remain bonded to him only through the Dark Mark, as we all are."

"What if I was killed instead?"

Snape sneered. "How gallant of you."

"I mean it."

Snape threw himself forward, black eyes burning. "Don't you see, Draco, that if you are killed, I fail in my Unbreakable Vow, and I die as well? I am a soldier in this conflict and I will lay down my life in its service. But not for one girl alone. Your love charm - who it hurts who it saves - all of this concerns me only insofar as it either weakens the Dark Lord or endangers your life, and through the vow, mine. The girl is beside every one of those points. Do you understand?"

"No, I don't," Draco answered. "And I don't believe you either. Don't act like I can't tell what turned you away from the Dark Lord in the first place. It was one girl alone: Lily Evans."

"Silence - "

"In this, Professor, you and I - we're the same. And because we're the same, I know that once you realized how carelessly the Dark Lord could hurt her, could kill her, you turned against him. Father told me it was a momentary lapse, just grief and you were loyal to the Dark Lord once again. But he doesn't know like I do, like we do. Because of Lily Evans, you are the Dark Lord's enemy forever."

"I said, silence."

Draco leaned across the table, meeting Snape, speaking into his face. "No, not anymore. You have helped me save Hermione for this long because you didn't save Lily. It's sacred and I honor it. I admire you for it more than for anything else you've ever taught me or done for me. So tell me how to save my girl. How do we un-bond ourselves from the Dark Lord with Hermione left alive? It's not enough that she be kept secret. She needs to be kept safe."

Snape sat back, smoothing his robes, not looking at Draco. "You will never mention Lily Evans to me again."

"As you like it, sir. Now what do we do?"

Snape raised his teacup to his lips but slammed it down on the table when he found it empty. Draco refilled it as Snape shook his hair out of his eyes and said, "If we cannot end or weaken the bond, we must make it so strong it transforms into something else, something for just the two of you. The monks intended the love charms to seal betrothals made in times of war, when the loved one needed protection. They were preparatory - intended to have other charms added upon them in due time, charms of," he paused, a long pause even for Snape, "charms of matrimony."

Draco set the teapot down nearly hard enough to crack it. "Brilliant. Bring her here. Bring her parents, Potter, anyone you like. Add the matrimonial charm. Make her my wife."

"Calm yourself, Draco. I do not have the matrimonial charm. As I said, I can bond you in a conventional wizard marriage but it may not be enough. The Mitrian matrimonial manuscript, however, was lost centuries ago. We may be able to recreate something close enough to it, just as Miss Granger modified the original love charm, but as of this moment, nothing like it exists."

"Let's get back to Hogwarts and make it then."

"We will, but it will take time and patience." He rapped his folded napkin against the top of Draco's head. "And it will take the work of the original caster herself, which means," he paused again, "that you, Draco Malfoy, the under-aged heir of an ancient house overrun with Death Eaters, son of a convict, your flesh already compromised by a Dark Mark, must convince Hermione Granger to consent to marry you, and not for magical or military purposes, but for love alone."

Snape finished with a snarl, a vicious sadness that tore at Draco's heart.

It was through his family that Draco knew Snape's history. His father had told him how he had rescued a weak, friendless, but genius boy Snape from a notorious band of Gryffindor bullies including James Potter. Snape was close to Lily Evans and it made him Potter's target.

Draco had imagined it before, Snape's school friends - that Avery and Mulciber - reacquainting Snape with an older friend he hadn't seen since his graduation, Lucius Malfoy, wealthy, tall and beautiful and smart, keeper of Dark magical artefacts and secrets they couldn't learn at school. He was recruiting promising students for a new movement led by Lord Voldemort. He was dangerous, powerful, irresistible. No one understood the pull of his father better than Draco.

The impossible piece of the equation between Snape and Lily Evans hadn't been magical or military but that fact that he became someone she could not love. Snape abandoned her for friends who flattered him, protected him from Potter and the rest. Lucius Malfoy was as much of a wedge between Severus Snape and Lily Evans as James Potter was.

But this wasn't the case for Draco and Hermione. Love was not what was missing between them. He nodded firmly. "Yes, sir. She will consent to marry me. I'm still working on it, but I'm nearly there."

"Yes, well aren't you Lucius's arrogant, pretty, adored doll of child?" he snapped. As the words left him he fell backward, as if shocked at himself, stung by his own venom, his eyes on his lap, away from Draco's startled face.

A moment of quiet passed between them before Draco stood up and walked around the table to Snape's chair. "Allow me to take your cloak, sir. And please go upstairs and get some rest. I promise I won't leave. And Bellatrix is more protective of my mother than you might expect. There's no need for you to go back to the Manor right away. Please, sir. You're exhausted and starting to fray. Rest here for a while."

Snape did not resist as Draco slid his cloak from his shoulders as he rose, folding it over his arm. He nodded to Draco but said nothing, climbing the stairs and disappearing with the creak and click of a bedroom door.

* * *

Ron sat on his bed in the Burrow, tossing a ball against the wall and catching in over and over. From the floor below, someone who could have been any of his brothers was hollering up at him to stop all the pounding.

"Knock it off, Ron," Harry joined in. "I know you're frustrated, but try to relax and enjoy the rest of the break, yeah?"

Ron huffed. "Easy for you to say. It's not like you started dating the fittest girl in school just to be separated from her right away."

Harry couldn't help himself. "Parkinson?"

Ron scoffed again. "If she's not the best one, I'd like to know who is."

Harry laughed rather darkly. "The finest girl in school is definitely not your type."

Ron sensed something nefarious. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

He drew his arm back, aiming the ball at Harry's head. "Say it, Harry."

Either way he was going to get hit, so Harry said it. "That would be your sister."

With his seeker reflexes, he was able to catch the ball before it pelted him in the head. But then Ron was reaching for a heavy book. That was when a crack sounded and each of them jumped backward as Kreacher appeared in the room. Ron groaned and lowered the book. "It's for you, Harry."

"Kreacher, what is it?"

The elf reminded Harry that he had asked him to watch Draco Malfoy (though he had taken Walburga Black's portrait's lead and was now calling him the Young Master, Heir of the House of Black) and he had come with something to report.

Harry sat down, cross-legged on the floor, at Kreacher's eye-level. "Well done. Go on then."

Kreacher replied that Young Master was enjoying Harry's hospitality very much.

Harry gaped up at Ron. "What's he on about? I'm the one who's always a guest. I don't have the luxury of offering anyone else hospitality."

"Headquarters," Ron blurted. "I think he's telling us that Malfoy is staying at headquarters. It's your house now, after all. How the bloody hell is Malfoy staying there? How can he even see it?"

Kreacher was muttering something about Snape taking dinner with them tonight, along with Young Master, Heir of the House of Black's particular friend.

Harry was frowning. "Snape. Snape took him there. How could he?"

"And he's not alone," Ron added. "He's got Snape and someone else too. Well speak up, Kreacher, who's the third?"

Kreacher regretted that both Young Master and Professor Snape had forbidden him to say.

"Order him to tell you, Harry, as the real master of the house," Ron pressed.

"You hear the way he's talking about Malfoy. He'll never betray him. Or if he does, he'll punish himself just about to death over it." Harry turned back to Kreacher. "Tell me what the three of them are doing."

Kreacher blinked his large, round eyes. Talking. They were laying about, eating and talking.

Harry pressed him with questions for the better part of an hour and eventually learned that Malfoy had angered his own houseguest and Snape had taken him from the Manor to Grimmauld Place to keep him safe while things quieted down at home.

"I don't understand," Harry said. "After everything that's happened, why is it me who's giving them refuge? Snape and Malfoy - let the pair of them be terrorized by Voldemort for Christmas. Why do I have to put up with it?"

"Because Snape's with Dumbledore, remember?" Ron said. "What was it you told the Minister of Magic when he came by here on Christmas Day, bold as brass? You said you were Dumbledore's man. And that means stomaching Snape."

"Which means stomaching Malfoy?"

"Well, if You-know-who is mad at him, maybe he did something right for a change."

"Or maybe he's in trouble because the hexed necklace plot went wrong."

"Harry, leave it, please. Listen to Lupin, listen to Dad, and leave it."

"Look, there are Death Eaters - retired or not - eating and sleeping in my house at this very minute. How can I be expected to just sit and do nothing?"

Ron waved an arm at Kreacher. "Send him back with orders to pay attention and tell you everything he hears them say from now on. You're in the perfect position to eavesdrop, even if it is second-hand through the Young Master Whatever House of Black fan club here. He still has to tell you the truth when you ask, right Kreacher?"

There was some ugly muttering about blood traitors before Kreacher accepted Harry's instructions and vanished from the room.

Harry still had the ball Ron had thrown at him clutched in the palm of his hand. He sat down on his camping cot and proceeded to fire it at the wall, over and over again.


	20. Chapter 20

Despite crowing about being anxious to get back to flagrant displays of affection with Pansy Parkinson, Ron only watched her from a distance on the platform at Kings Cross. In the cold, oblique sunlight, she was prettier than he remembered her, standing with her parents who thought of him as a blood traitor. Pansy had said they weren't Death Eaters, just bigots. But this year, as the Dark Lord sat dispatching terror from his hiding places, keeping a line between those two positions was getting more difficult.

When she spied him watching them, Pansy blushed and her mother felt her cheeks and forehead, as if asking if she was sick. Ron smirked.

"Now look for a package from us as your birthday gets closer, Ron," his own mum was saying, not looking at him but smoothing Ginny's hair as if the girl wasn't a hand taller than her already. "Take care, all of you. And Harry," she said, her lips pursed, worried, "mind your headmaster and don't fret about the rest. There's a good lad."

Harry's mouth twitched as if he was about to smile reassuringly at her, but just then Malfoy walked past, careful not to look at Harry and the Weasleys, all of them keenly aware of one another. For the second time, no one had come to the station to see Malfoy off to school. He stood by himself in the steam of the train, ghostly pale and still.

Pansy took leave of her parents and boarded first. Inside the train, Ron dumped his trunk in a compartment with Harry and began scanning each car for her. She was at the front, with all the prefects but Malfoy, looking over schedules and discussing concerns - which had come to mean warning each other of new Weasley products making their way to school.

"Oh, Ron," Hermione said, drawing his eyes away from Pansy. "You're on the first shift this time, with - "

"Parkinson," he finished.

Pansy hopped to her feet, quick but still casual. "Right."

There was no need to begin patrolling so early. The train was only half-full, but they were walking its length anyway, pushing past students tugging at trunks and animal carriers.

"How was your holiday, Parkinson?" Ron asked, not at all sure how to settle back into her.

"Quiet," she answered.

"Oh, sorry."

"No, Weasley. I'm not telling you to be quiet. I mean to say that my holiday was quiet. You know," she said. "Not much company. A bit lonely."

"Oh. Right." He stepped ahead of her, breaking up a knot of younger students overwhelmed by their luggage. He paused, absentmindedly helping them hoist their belongings into the racks overhead.

"And you?" she asked him.

"My holiday?" he said. "A proper madhouse. Loads of company. Bodies everywhere. But - but still lonely."

Near the centre of the train, as the passage got more crowded, it became more difficult for them to stay together. They were reaching the Hufflepuff cars, the most raucous section, full of loud reunions and little personal space. Ron reached behind himself, grabbing for Pansy's hand. She clutched at his with both of hers.

There it was, the feel of her skin against his - warm and soft. His heart thudded and he dragged her toward himself through the crush of Hufflepuffs. The students' bodies and clothing were a blur of colours and smells past her face. And then she was inside a compartment, her back against the door. With his free hand, Ron tugged the window blind down behind her. He was holding her upturned, breathless face between his palms, bending toward her, when someone cleared their throat behind him.

"Move along, Weasley." It was Snape, so still and black against the dark grey seats he may as well have been coiled in a disillusionment charm.

"Sorry, sir."

"Open - the blind."

"Yes, sir."

They were back in the corridor, walking fast, away from Snape's compartment, Ron apologizing profusely to Pansy. "Just like him to be skulking and hiding somewhere, the old creeper."

"Not really like him to send us off with no detention though, not even points lost," Pansy added.

Ron hummed. "Must be because he owes Harry one. He did him a bit of a favour over the holidays."

"Potter did?"

"Yeah." They had come to another empty compartment and stepped inside, carefully this time. Ron kicked at the seats to make sure they were unoccupied before sitting down himself.

Pansy sat next to him, bending into the curve beneath the arm he closed around her shoulders. He was blushing but had to say it anyway, muscling through the shyness. "I missed you, even more than I thought I would."

She had nestled her face against his chest but at this confession, she made a high sweet sound and looked up at him. No one interrupted this time as Ron brought his lips to hers, lightly, a gentle grazing, and then firmer, nipping with his lips to get hold of hers, warm and a little wet, growing hotter as the connection was sealed and deepened.

They stayed that way until the train whistle blew. At the noise, the kiss broke and Ron crushed her against himself, the shyness gone.

"Am I going to have to know all your secrets now?" Pansy asked. "Like, do I get to find out what Potter did for Snape?"

"Do you want to know? It's nothing really. All business. He just let Snape borrow something while he was in town." As usual, it was truthful enough. Ron wasn't about to divulge the secret of Grimmauld Place just because Pansy was wondering about it. "Honestly, there's not much going on this year beyond what you already know. I mean, everyone knows about the necklace and Katie Bell. You were involved in the Death Eaters being mad about the love charm they found at Malfoy's place, so that's no secret to you. Harry's paranoid about some other stuff, but that's just him. Can't be too hard on him though. He lost his godfather last year and - well, it shows."

He hadn't been looking at her when he said it, and when he looked back now, she seemed uncertain, head cocked to one side, eyes narrowed.

"What?" Ron asked. "Dumbledore is handling the necklace incident, and as for the love charm business, you were there when Snape told us our role in all of that was to date obnoxiously enough for everyone to know it wasn't you who made it."

She sat back. "But why did the Death Eaters care? Kids do love magic on each other all the time and the adults usually just act like it's harmless - "

"Yeah, but it's not," Ron was saying. "It's dangerous, and stupid - humiliating. It's bad enough that even my anarchist brothers have restrictions on how they sell love magic in their shop."

"But since when are Death Eaters worried about something just because it's dangerous and stupid? Since when were they worried about love at all apart from breeding? Maybe this is different. Maybe there is something seriously wrong going on with Draco and - "

"Don't say her name and his together outside school," Ron hurried. "It might not be safe. They've given us the all clear for you when it comes to the love charm, but not for her."

Pansy sat back. "So we've come back 'round to protecting her, have we?"

"Don't be mad," Ron was saying, rocking her back and forth in an enormous hug. "Don't make that couple's high drama ours. Go back to obsessing over what Malfoy might be up to. I'm used to that. Harry's already doing that. Just don't be mad, love."

Pansy's cheeks flushed.

He hadn't meant to call her "love." It just came out. He blushed himself, bracing for her to correct him.

But she certainly didn't seem angry, swiveling sideways and shifting into his lap, tucking her head under his chin. He'd never had a girl in his lap before, let alone one he liked this much. She was light and warm, soft with pretty legs pressing down on his own. He laid one hand on her back but didn't dare draw her any closer.

He could hardly swallow but he forced himself to speak. "I don't pry when it comes to Malfoy and - that relationship he manages to keep going somehow. I started out leaving it alone because it hurt to know the details, but by now, after she's been safe for two years in spite of sneaking around with him, I hate to say it, but I rather - trust him, in my way."

Pansy tightened her arms around his torso. "Potter doesn't trust him though?"

"No, not at all. He's always got an eye out to catch Malfoy at something. Tiresome, really. You've been close to him for ages. Do you trust Malfoy?"

Pansy hummed. "I trust Draco to want to do the right thing. But he's up against so much, thanks to his parents. I'm not sure he's free to do what's right, or even to know how to tell what it is. It's not like that for you, Ron. Your parents are noble do-gooders. They rush in and mouth off like they've never any doubt. And the way you talk about them, they've never given you reason to doubt what you should do or why, when it comes to what's important. You don't know what it's like to live without that."

Ron suddenly felt very lucky, and a little sad.

He sat up straighter, as if just realizing something. "You know, I don't think I ever told Harry about the Death Eaters and Malfoy's love charm." He risked linking his free hand with the one on her back, encircling Pansy in an embrace as she sat in his lap. "I've been that distracted. When we first started the lipstick plan, I told him I was up to something meant to shake Malfoy off his love affair. And then when you and me actually happened, he said something about it being a throwback to the Yule Ball and I let it go at that. I never told him the other reason I was following you around."

She smiled somewhat archly as she nestled between his arms. "I know something about Death Eater intrigue that Potter doesn't? Does that mean I'm in your secret inner circle?"

He was bending to kiss her again. "Love, I'm in danger of making you my entire circle."

* * *

Malfoy was dressed in his robes and badge, making his way to the head carriage where the prefects were meeting. If he was going to convince Hermione he was mature enough for her to accept him as a husband, his behaviour needed to be stellar. He needed to be responsible, taking time to care for other people, the way she did. And he needed to have peace between himself and Potter - no more childish sniping and fighting.

But Potter wasn't making it easy.

As Malfoy came down the passage, past Potter's compartment, the door thudded open. "Had a comfortable holiday, did you?" Potter asked.

Malfoy nodded. "Yes," he said, and then in a grave tone he hoped sounded earnest, he added. "Thank you."

"No need to thank me, since no one asked me," Potter snapped. "It's no manor house but it's no Azkaban either. By the way, how was Azkaban? I've never been myself."

The years of baiting and fighting Potter had left a strong imprint on Draco's emotions. He didn't truly understand how deep his impulse to lash back at him would be. He wasn't as prepared as he thought he was to control himself. He needed to flee, to walk away without a word, run toward Hermione and the meeting with the other prefects about order and good student conduct.

But Potter was following him down the passage, not shouting but talking loud and fast, low and angry. "Did your mum bring you along for the visit? Did they give you a preview of Azkaban, before you wind up there yourself? Should make the transition easier for you, especially if they let you room with Daddy."

He risked speaking between clenched jaws. "I am not going to fight with you, Potter."

"No? Come on Malfoy, it's been so long. Nothing since that scuffle at the DA raid, since we can hardly count an attack on a petrified person laid out on the floor to be stomped on as a real fight now, can we?"

Draco stopped and spun around to face him. "Look, I can't take that back. But from now on, if we'd just leave each other alone - "

"You'd like that, wouldn't you."

"Yes, actually."

Harry stepped close enough to rumpled Malfoy's robe. "Not a chance. I know what you've done - what you are. Let's see that arm, Malfoy - the one you yanked away from Madam Malkin when she tried to touch it. The one you showed Borgin to scare him into helping you hex Katie Bell. The one you brought into my house."

Malfoy was backing away, fear and hatred on his face, his teeth clenched so hard they ached.

Potter lunged forward, grabbing at Malfoy's left wrist, tugging upward on his sleeve. Beneath his robe and jumper, Draco wore a white shirt with long, well-fitted sleeves, the cuffs cinched together not by flimsy buttons and thread but by heavy pewter cufflinks locked in place even as Potter tore at them. They kept his arm covered as Malfoy struggled to shake Potter loose.

They were shoving and tripping each other, banging against the walls, grunting and panting.

"Get off me, Potter."

"Just show me and prove me wrong." Harry was frantic now. He couldn't hold onto Malfoy much longer with just his physical strength. He was reaching for his wand when a voice rang out in the passage.

"Oi! That's enough. Break it up."

Ron was running toward what appeared to him to be two older students who should have known better brawling on the train. He could only see the back of one of their heads, since the taller one was being held in a headlock, hidden from view by the shorter boy who was about to lose the upper hand and looked as if he was going to escalate things by bringing his wand into the mix.

When they heard Ron's voice, the taller one wrenched himself free, standing up straight, bringing his platinum blond head into view. If this was Malfoy, then Ron knew who the other boy must be only too well.

"Aw, Harry, no." Ron had stepped between them, his hands on both of Harry's shoulders, walking him backward, toward their compartment. "Take it easy, mate. He's not worth it."

It was the first time hearing those words from Weasley had actually stung. Malfoy was still smarting from them as Pansy took his arm and led him away, into an empty compartment near the front.

"You can't go on duty like this," she said, pulling out her compact to show him his reflection. Potter had roughed up his clothes and hair and the red scuff on his jaw where Harry had held him in the crook of his arm was darkening into a purple bruise.

He swore. "Does Hermione have to know?"

"Draco, it's hard to fight in private on a crowded train. Loads of people saw you. She's probably hearing about it as we speak."

He swore more elaborately.

"What did you do to him?"

Malfoy sank onto the seat beside him, lying back, covering his eyes with his arm. "Nothing - well, not nothing. Nothing today, nothing I can fix, nothing I can change."

Pansy crouched beside him, patting his elbow. "Get some rest, Draco. You look knackered. We'll make do without you."

He couldn't answer. His throat bobbed, and he reached out and squeezed Pansy's hand in thanks as she stood to leave.

* * *

Upon arriving in Hogsmeade, Draco didn't move when the train came to a stop. As he lay on the seats as if asleep, the door of the compartment slid open. He lifted his arm from his eyes and Hermione was there, stiff, play-acting her role as prefect.

She spoke, her hands behind her back, clasped together on the handle of the door. "Malfoy, we ask that you wait and leave at the end of the disembarking. Ron has gone ahead to get Harry off the train first."

He sat up, nodding. If it was going to be this detached and official, they should have just sent Pansy back for him. He had to say something. Maybe that was why she came.

"I was walking away, Granger - "

"Yes, that's what the second year Ravenclaws who saw the whole thing told us. They reckoned you must have deserved it, but couldn't say why. We wanted you to know that we understood that." She said it without looking at him. The train was closely watched and they had to remain mere classmates while they were on it.

She sent him on ahead in the second to last carriage to the castle, coming in the last one herself, with just a few stragglers, Flitwick, and an Auror.

Dinner had already started by the time she got inside, but Draco was not in the Great Hall. If he was hiding, there was only one place he would go.

He had postponed returning to school as long as he could, and now he was back here, on the seventh floor, lying in the shadow of the vanishing cabinet, trying to imagine what to do next. Maybe he would need to confide completely in Snape after all. And why not? He'd been brilliant over Christmas.

Or maybe it was all useless and he should just stay hidden in here forever, become another ghost in the castle, the one with the mark.

Draco heard the hinges on the door of the Room of Hidden Things creak as Hermione opened it. Lying on his back on the rug, he turned his head to watch her step inside, and instead of jumping up to meet her, as he usually did, he simply lifted a hand and waved. Above him, the velvet cover had been pulled off the vanishing cabinet. She noticed it, looking it over as she stepped toward him.

When she was close enough, he raised both of his arms toward her. It could have been an invitation to take his hands and pull him up onto his feet. If it was, she read it differently, sinking between his arms instead, lying next to him on the rug, his arms falling around her, her head on his shoulder. She settled into him. He heard her inhale his scent and murmur contentedly against his neck.

It was then that he decided.

"Hermione, I have something more to tell you…"


	21. Chapter 21

"Hermione, I have something more to tell you…"

She lifted her head from Draco's shoulder, raising herself up on one elbow where they lay on the rug in the Room of Hidden Things at the foot of the vanishing cabinet. She covered his mouth with her palm, and when his voice trailed off, she lifted her hand and kissed him for the first time since they'd parted at Grimmauld Place during the holidays. For a moment, his resolve to tell her something awful was derailed.

They'd been kissing each other since she was fifteen years old, long enough that Hermione's mouth tasted like his own. Beside him, she stretched as if yawning, curving her spine into an s shape, rising up slightly from the rug to press her body against his. Kissing and holding her was a rush of home after a holiday spent without a home, and he was at once filled with relief in what he found in her and grief in what was lost, all but ruined - the manor, his parents, his family. Lonely, heartbroken Draco knew that all the proposals he would make from now on, every time he asked her to let him be her husband, wouldn't be about bolstering an ancient magic spell. They would be about the future, a second chance at a family - one that began with himself and Hermione.

Did she have any sense of how deeply he had fallen for her, as she moved her lips against his, letting their bodies meld at their mouths? Her hand slid over his chest, beneath his arm, pressing against his shoulder blade. He was thinner this year. Too tense to have much of an appetite for food, no more quidditch to build up his muscle mass. But he was still far bigger than her. With her hand on his back, she tipped him up and toward herself, not forcefully enough to move him very far, but to signal that she wanted him to turn and kiss her from above.

He acquiesced, rolling toward her, propping himself on one arm, bearing some of his weight on it so she wouldn't be crushed between himself and the stone floor, yet still letting her have what she wanted - the warmth and comfort of bearing most of his torso on top of hers. She reached out for more, hooking her heel into the hollow at the back of his knee to pull his legs over her as well.

He let her get as close to him as she wanted, not worrying about the monks and their purity clause for the first time in months. No doubt Hermione would remember it, conscientious witch that she was, even as she walked her fingers beneath his jumper, tugging his shirt free of his trousers and touching the bare skin of his abdomen with her fingertips.

He shivered and sighed, his mind drifting away, letting his desire for her build. Let her tell him when they needed to stop for a change. Of course she would. When she did, he would tell her the reason he was still alive - the vanishing cabinet. And after that, they would figure out how to get past it - either that or she would leave him, making this the last time he would come home to her.

The thought had him falling farther, throwing himself into her gravity, rolling fully on top of her, most of his weight held on his knees and elbows but the rest of him in full contact with her. Her shirt had ridden up with his motion and their stomachs were touching, skin to skin.

Right there - that was her line. She gasped, pulling her mouth away from his, her lips glistening, breath fast and heavy. He stopped kissing her but didn't move away, keeping his face over hers, their eyes locked on each other's, breathing the air between them, its taste like that of their kiss.

She smiled at him. "When we get this far, you usually ask me to marry you."

He shook his head. "Maybe I would ask again right now if I wanted marriage mostly to dodge the purity clause, but that's not the most important reason why - not anymore. Don't mistake me asking you to marry me for me asking you for sex. It's beyond that. I want you because nothing makes me happier than you do. I just want to be with you. I'd want you as my family even if the monks said we had to stay virgins forever."

She started to laugh, stopping when he didn't smile back, looking down at her with a grave but beautiful intensity.

"That is darling of you," she said, her fingers in his hair, "but that's not what the monks asked of us, thank the stars."

She reached between them to right her shirt. He gave her room to work, rolling onto his back again.

"I interrupted you," she said as she smoothed her clothes. "Sorry, I do want to hear what you have to say. It's just that I - needed you like this, for a bit. It wasn't easy, supervising you on the train after not seeing you for days, standing there like a stranger."

He sat up, taking her hand but not looking at her as he spoke. "Was that all it was? Or were you keeping me quiet because you're afraid I was about to tell you something that would make it impossible for you to stay with me?"

She sat up, kneeling beside him. "What's left for you to say, Draco? How bad would it have to get? Would you have to, oh, I don't know, make a violent raid on the student group I co-founded? Then turn us over to Umbridge for torture? Or maybe break my best friend's nose on purpose? Or hex my housemate? Or take the bleeding Dark Mark?"

"Stop. I get it."

She leaned her forehead against his temple. "Trust me, Draco. And tell me what it is."

He sucked in a huge breath, waved his arm to the mass of furniture beside them. "It's that. The big black cabinet standing with its door ajar. Think, Hermione. Have you ever seen anything like it before?"

She blinked at it, squinted, then her eyes went wide. "Borgin and Burkes. The vanishing cabinet they have there. I saw it when I followed you. This - this is its mate?"

He let out his breath. "Yes."

She stood up, approaching the cabinet. "Does anyone else know it's here?"

He nodded, rising to stand beside her. "Yes. The very worst people know. They know it's here and that's why they've kept me and my mother alive this long, so they can make use of it."

Her hand was outstretched, inching toward the handle of the open door. "But this cabinet, it's the same one Fred and George shoved Graham Montague into last year, isn't it? Someone's moved it up here."

"Yes, I did."

She was nodding, hopeful. "So if it's that cabinet, then it's broken. They can't use it. Montague didn't end up in Borgin and Burkes. It didn't work. He was lost instead, wound up in the school's plumbing. And then he was sick for weeks."

"Nearly died," Draco finished.

Her voice was pitching higher, brighter. "Right. So - the very worst people - they'd just get lost and hurt in the passage between the cabinets too. This one is no threat. As long as it's broken, there's no threat to Hogwarts."

He said nothing.

"It's broken. Draco, tell me it's broken."

His voice came slowly, low over her shoulder. "I've been going as slowly as I can, Hermione. I tried to satisfy them with the necklace plot. But they're so impatient, so single-minded - so wickedly dangerous. They're holding my mother. She just sits on the piano bench by the front door, waiting to run for her life, or for Snape to show up and drug her to sleep. They're forcing me. I had to mend this cabinet just enough to show them I was in earnest, able, making progress. Watch."

He reached into the pocket of the robe he'd set aside on the rug, and produced another experimental apple. Brushing past her, he set the apple inside the cabinet, and closed the door.

"Draco, no."

"Harmonia nectere passus."

"No!" she lunged in front of him, wrenching the door open. The apple was gone.

She yelled, slammed the door shut, beat on the closed door with both of her fists.

Hating to see her touching the vile thing, Draco pulled Hermione away from the cabinet, holding her by both of her upper arms. She let herself be led away but ranted her disapproval. "We have to smash it - throw it down the stairs so it shatters into kindling. It can't stay here."

He was shushing her. "Listen to me, Hermione. If I went home for Christmas having accomplished nothing, he would have slaughtered my family on the spot. I had to use this as something to barter for our lives. I had to finish some of the mending of it. But I got it to stop here. It's still not a threat. It can transfer inanimate objects but nothing alive - no Death Eaters. They're still well outside the school. We tested it the night of Slughorn's party."

She let out a high, hurt cry. "The night of Slughorn's party? You danced with me, and kissed me goodbye, and then you stayed here and worked with Death Eaters to mend this?"

He tried to take her in his arms but her posture was stiff, unyielding. He kept talking. "It's just like the Dark Mark, just like the cursed necklace, Hermione. I had only two choices: either work with them on a plan to get Death Eaters in here, or die, along with both of my parents."

She sniffed, in tears. "Don't die, Draco." Her arms were around his neck. "Don't die."

She cried against his chest as he held her, as he told her, "I haven't. It's still alright."

After a moment she sniffed again, wiping her eyes. "This is why Crookshanks treats you as untrustworthy now. Because you are - "

"Hermione - "

She batted his arm. "Why didn't you tell me before now? All these months - we could have dealt with this together."

He bent his face into her hair. "I'm sorry. I was scared. I wanted to keep you safe from all this. And then there's Potter. How would you answer him and his constant monologue about me being up to something on behalf of the Death Eaters once you knew how right he was?"

She shook her head. "You honestly think you made the right choice? Keeping it secret? Asking me to marry you every day even as you chose to keep such a big part of your life hidden from me?"

He hung his head. "No. No, it was wrong. I'm sorry. This is me repenting. I need you in my life in every way. In fact, I think my only chance of getting myself and my mother out of this disaster might be through the charm you left on my arm. It's the most powerful magic affecting me right now - stronger than the Dark Mark itself."

She stopped sniffing, turning to look up at him. "What?"

He nodded. "Yes. And the Dark Lord knows it too. It's tearing him up like nothing has since Harry's mother's magic sent him underground for ten years."

She frowned. "What does that mean?"

He kissed the top of her head. "It means we might have something more here than just a plan to save the worthless, filthy Malfoy line. This charm, Hermione, it might be something to set the whole war back a few years, long enough for the new Ministry, or the headmaster, or - hell - even Potter to figure out how to end it for good."

She stood speechless, her hand gripping his left forearm, where the marks warred in his flesh.

He released her from his embrace and extended a hand to her. "There's a lot more to explain. The monks - well, just come with me to find Snape. He's been working on this all along. You can hear it from him, and it's time that he heard about this cabinet," he used his wand to drape the velvet cover over the it, "from me."

* * *

Ron had barely stepped into the bedroom when he realized Harry was already talking to him from behind a large, creased sheet of parchment. "They're off the Map again. Both of them, Hermione and Malfoy, together. Off in the Room of Requirement, no doubt."

Ron sloughed his robe onto the floor. "Of course they are. And if some secret unplottable room was the only place I could be with Pansy after not seeing her all during the holidays, I'd be camped out in it for days myself."

Harry sat up, refolding the Map with angry force. "I've had enough of politely letting them carry on," he said. "When she comes back, I'm going to demand she tell me what they're up to in there."

Ron pulled off his jumper and tossed it over Harry's head. "Snogging, Harry. They're in there snogging, making up for lost time, getting reacquainted. And don't you dare ask her about it in front of me. The last thing I want to hear is all the details of it."

Harry threw the jumper back at him. "Just because you're obsessed with snogging doesn't mean everyone is."

"Aren't they?" Ron demanded. "Shouldn't they be? In fact, I think you'd be dealing with every little thing in your life much better if you got yourself a girlfriend."

"The girl I like isn't available," Harry snapped, colour rising in his cheeks.

"So find someone else," was Ron's glib response. "Whoever you like, she can't be so great the only alternative is nothing. What about that Romilda Vane - the one Hermione warned you might be trying to slip you a love potion - chat her up. Easy as that. Romance managed."

"Shut up, Ron."

"Fine, but someone has to say this to you first: you were right out of order on the train today, with Malfoy. I hate him as much as anyone but you can't grab a man and start tearing at his clothes to satisfy your own suspicions."

Harry was on his feet, shouting. "Why did he fight me? Why didn't he just show me he's clean and be done with it?"

"I don't know," Ron answered just as loudly. "Maybe because it's embarrassing and inappropriate and, frankly mate, none of your business. The Order has a plan here. Dumbledore told you to focus on Slughorn and all those memories of Riddle he's showing you, and you're not doing it. But take it from a sixth born child, there comes a time when we all have to be good soldiers and play our part, even the Chosen One."

Harry stood silently for a moment before sitting down hard on his bed.

Ron sighed. "Romilda is down in the common room. Go say hello. I'm taking a shower."


	22. Chapter 22

Draco stood in the Room of Hidden Things with his hand extended, waiting. Hermione looked hard at it, and then at the red velvet shroud he'd draped over the half-mended vanishing cabinet behind him.

"Let's find Snape," he said again, "so he can help me explain the rest. You're going to have a million questions and he can answer them better than I can."

She didn't move. "I need," she began, "I think I need to go a little more slowly. I commend you for telling me about all this, but still, my trust has been, well - disturbed. And it's not just because you took so long to confide in me. It's Snape too. I mean, if you were taking me to McGonagall for answers, that would be one thing, but Snape…"

She took his hand, but instead of letting him lead her away, to Snape's dungeon office, she stepped into his arms again, setting his palm on the small of her back. "Draco, you and Snape work both sides of this conflict. But me - I've never done that, though if I take one more step with you, I'll be closer to that grey area than I've ever been before. It's terrifying. So I need something to give me more confidence, more convincing that it would be the right thing to do - something beyond you looking at me that way."

He bent to connect their foreheads, looking at her even more intently than before. "Dumbledore trusts Snape," he said. "Isn't that what your Order tells you? Isn't it still good enough?"

She sighed. "I can't always be the obedient little foot soldier. Sometimes I need to find things out for myself instead of just accepting whatever everyone tells me." She rolled her forehead against his. "I do have a way to get the assurance I'm looking for. But I need you to wait here for me while I get it sorted."

Draco leaned back, raising his eyebrows. "Sneakoscope?"

She laughed. "No."

"Right. Then go ahead and use legilimency on me. I won't resist."

She frowned. "I'm uncomfortable with the ethics of legilimency. It's a violation."

He nodded. "Speaking of dodgy rules of consent, how about Veritaserum? Do you have some? I'll take it. Maybe Snape could give us some."

"I said, no Snape," she protested. "Not yet. But trust me, and wait here for me. And do not touch that cabinet."

* * *

Harry jumped from where he'd been reclining on his bed, glaring at the Map. "It's Hermione. She's finally back on the Map," he called to Ron, though he was still in the shower. Harry watched her dot, waiting. "But not Malfoy. Ah, but who cares. If I get her to take me back to the seventh floor, she can get me inside the Room of Requirement, which will be better than confronting him in the corridor anyway."

Soaking wet, Ron stuck his head out from behind the bathroom door. "You talking to someone out here, Harry? You alright?"

Harry tucked the map underneath his pillow. "Yeah, great," he told Ron. "Off to say hi to Romilda Vane."

Harry was moving so fast he had to fight not to fall down the stairs. Of course, he had no interest in meeting Romilda Vane in the common room, and he hoped she'd have gone by now. She hadn't. In fact, she was standing near the portrait hole as if she was monitoring it, waiting to pounce after a holiday break's worth of plotting. He swore at himself for being in too much of a rush to think to come downstairs in his invisibility cloak.

It was too late now. Romilda had seen him and she was beaming, striding toward Harry from her post at the portrait hole, her friends hanging back, tittering with laughter. "Hi, Harry," she said.

"Hey," he answered, nodding but weaving past her, toward the exit.

"Wait up, Potter," she said, tossing her hair. He didn't want her following him, so he stopped. "My family gave me loads of sweets for Christmas, like I'm still a six-year-old who doesn't give a care about her figure." Romilda twisted her stance, highlighting her figure as she spoke of it. "I've managed to give most of the lot away but I'm left with this last box of chocolate cauldrons - the liqueur type. Would you be so kind as to take them off my hands for me?"

It was an odd request, pretty clearly an attempt to slip him that love potion Hermione had warned him about ages ago. Harry was instantly repulsed but not inclined to deliver a lecture about the sanctity of his powers of consent. No, the easiest way he could think of to deal with it was not to deal with it at all. All Harry said was, "Sure, thanks," as he took the chocolate, and bolted back up the stairs.

In his room, he rooted through his trunk to find his cloak, tossing the chocolate aside. He came back down the stairs again, invisible as he pleased, to find that Romilda and her friends had gone and Hermione was now coming into the common room. Thanks to the delay with Romilda, he'd missed his chance to catch Hermione and get her to take them back to Malfoy before she made it back to her house.

But she didn't look like she had arrived in the common room ready to relax and unwind for the night. Instead, she was on her knees, looking under the sofas and chairs, whistling through her teeth in a squeaky way. "Crookshanks," she sang. "Crookshanks come out. I need you, my darling beast. Crooksy…"

All at once, Harry had what he thought was a better idea than trying to convince her to take him back upstairs right away. Instead, he'd stay hidden, quiet, watching to see where things led.

"Oh, there you are," Hermione said, reaching under a desk. "Come along, Crookshanks. Time to show me whether you've settled your differences - or not."

She bundled the hairy orange mess in her arms and ducked back out the portrait hole, Harry slipping through behind her. He was in luck. She was heading directly up the staircase, making for the seventh floor. She walked briskly, muttering sweetly to her cat who was still angry about spending the better part of the day traveling by train inside a carrier.

Harry followed with an awkward tip-toeing gait, fighting to keep his footsteps quiet on the hard stone floors. He nearly cheered when she turned down the corridor with the troll tapestry and the door to the unplottable room was visible to him in the stone wall for the first time this year. She turned the handle to step inside, and just as she did, Harry took her arm, pushing into the room with her, his cloak falling to his feet.

Just as Harry expected, there was Malfoy, hiding inside the room. Harry didn't expect to find the room so full of weird and broken and forbidden objects, but he wasn't noticing much about them right now. All he saw was Malfoy, still dressed the way he had been earlier, when they tussled on the train, gaping at him, looking shocked and hurt.

"Harry!" Hermione gasped. "You've been sneaking around, following me?"

"That's right," Harry said, too triumphant to be ashamed of himself, standing between Malfoy and Hermione with his wand drawn. "Sorry I had to trick you, Hermione. Not sorry I caught this one red-handed in here though."

Malfoy couldn't help sneering. "Nice one, Potter. And what, exactly, do you think you've caught me doing?"

Harry glanced around the room. It was the oddest collection of objects he'd ever seen but most of it just looked like rubbish - potion bottles with their contents dried out to crystals, torn books, cushions darkened with wine stains and reeking like rotten fruit, damaged furniture. It was what the big dustbin behind Borgin and Burkes must look like on the inside. Nothing about it leapt out as particularly useful or incriminating for Malfoy or the Death Eaters.

Harry shook off the distraction, stepping closer to Malfoy, still gripping his wand. "I don't know what you're up to yet, but you're going to tell me right now."

In all the tension, Hermione's grip on Crookshanks had got much tighter than he ever allowed himself to be held. He yowled, twisting and leaping free of her arms, scampering into the mess. Hermione's hands were empty now, and she used them to tug backward on Harry's elbow.

"Harry, please," she said. "Put your wand away. I swear to you, I will tell you everything I know. But I need a little more time, more information before I can begin to talk about it, just one more day - please."

"Thanks, Hermione," Harry quipped, "but I think I can handle questioning him myself. I might enjoy it."

He took another step, his wand already in motion. Malfoy was doing nothing to protect himself, looking over his shoulder instead, as if worrying about something behind him getting hit. He didn't move as Harry called, "Petrificus totalus."

Malfoy's entire body stiffened and crashed to the floor, paralysed.

"Harry Potter, you stop it right now!" Hermione was shouting from behind him. "I have a wand too and I will use it to defend someone who's helpless, even against you."

Harry gave a bitter laugh. "Helpless? Is that what you call him?"

Harry was standing over Malfoy, who was indeed powerless to move or to protect himself, laid out on the floor at the foot of the shrouded vanishing cabinet. "Remember the last time this spell passed between us, Malfoy? On the train at the start of Fall term? You said it was for your father, didn't you?"

"Harry, stop. Don't make me - "

Harry bent to snatch Malfoy's wand out of his pocket. Hermione knew him well enough that she could tell what would happen next. He would use Malfoy's own wand to cast Prior Incantato, revealing Malfoy's last spell. This spell, she remembered, would be the one he used to send the experimental apple through the vanishing cabinet. It certainly wasn't a common spell, and Harry might not recognize it, but if it was cast too near the vanishing cabinet, who knew what might happen?

She had drawn her wand. "Harry, no - "

There was a screech, a hiss, and a flash of orange fur. Before Harry could touch Malfoy or his wand, Crookshanks had shot out of the room's wreckage and sprung onto Malfoy's chest, the cat now standing on Malfoy's petrified body with his back arched and bristling.

Harry staggered back in surprise and with the impact of another, far more devastating feeling. It was a sense-memory. Something much like this had happened before, in the shrieking shack, when they had Sirius pinned to the floor, and Harry had wanted to kill him - was going to kill him - but this same cat had done the same thing - jumping on his chest as a shield.

Lowering his wand, Harry slumped to sit on the floor.

Hermione was kneeling beside him. "Do you see?" she was saying. "It's just like it was when we were wrong about Sirius Black. Crookshanks knows who we can trust. It's a magical gift from his kneazle nature. And he knows how important it is to protect the trustworthy, even from us."

The fierce warrior cat was looking less fearsome now that he had sat down on the motionless Draco and started grooming his own flat face with his paws. Hermione grinned at him, and decided that, for now, her conversation with Harry would go best if Draco remained petrified a little longer.

Harry was limp and speechless, his head in his hands. He had expected to find Malfoy here. What he hadn't expected to encounter here was a scene so much like one from his past, and with it, the fresh trauma of memories of Sirius in distress and all because of him. Their time together had been full of drama and danger. He had promised Harry a happy family life, but he hadn't survived long enough to provide it. The grief Harry carried around at all times, usually as a constant rumble, surged into a massive, buffeting wave, sinking him.

Hermione's arms were around him, and he was crying into her shoulder.

"I hate them," he said, "The Malfoys and Blacks. They took Sirius from me. They left me alone. I hate them."

"I know you do. You can hate them. It's alright." she said. "Hate whoever you want and I'll still be here with you. I will never betray you."

He sobbed against her as she patted his back. She waited until his sobs quieted to sniffles before she went on. "I'm so sorry about how this looks, Harry, but please trust me. There's something here, with Malfoy and Snape, that might actually help us. I don't understand it and can't explain it yet. But I'm working on it. So can you give me until the morning? Can you go home to bed and wait a few hours more? I promise you, Harry, I'll tell you everything there is in the morning, after I get a proper idea about it myself."

Harry kept his silence a little longer before he sat up, away from her shoulder.

"Please," she said again.

He gave a noisy sigh and a nod, and rose to leave them there.

"Finite incantatem," Hermione said once Harry had left.

Draco stirred, groaning, flexing his newly unfrozen muscles and sitting up slowly, one hand rubbing the bump on the back of his head, the other cradling Crookshanks against his chest. He was aching and ready to catch up with the dinner he missed that evening, but feeling lighter and happier than he had in months.

Crookshanks sealed it by not springing away from Draco's hold, but nestling between him and Hermione as she sat close to them.

Draco grinned at her as he lifted his face out of Crookshanks's coat. "Nicely done, family."

* * *

Neville was walking through the boys' bedroom in the dark, surprised to come up to find most everyone else already in bed. Ron, thoroughly snogged, was sleeping peacefully. Harry, after a good cry, was sleeping fitfully. Between their beds, on the floor, was a cardboard box just sturdy enough to hurt when Neville stubbed his toe against it, sending it spinning off under Ron's bed.

Ever the considerate roommate, Neville tried to hop and hiss as silently as possible as he gripped his smarting toe. When the pain subsided, he reached an arm under Ron's bed to retrieve the box and toss it onto the blankets, next to his feet. In the dark, Neville couldn't read the label, and didn't know it was a box of chocolate cauldrons, sent with love from Romilda Vane.


	23. Chapter 23

When Hermione insisted they stop in the kitchens to get Draco something to eat on their way to Snape's dungeon office, he wondered aloud if she was trying to stall the meeting.

"I certainly am not," she argued. "I don't love meeting with Snape, but I do love finding out things. It's one of my favourite things, actually." She slid an arm inside Draco's robes, curling it around his ribs, which were getting easier to palpate through his clothes all the time. "But just one of my favourites."

He squeezed her tightly, pulling his robe over both of them in the dim, empty late evening corridor.

Bundled against him, Hermione fell into step with him. "No one's been taking care of you lately, Draco, and as the grownup in this relationship - "

"Hermione, no - "

"I am taking responsibility for your welfare."

He groaned. "Enough with the coddling of the underaged wizard. I've aged ten years this holiday."

"That is exactly my point," she said. "What the adults in your life have put you through this year is inexcusable. You've forgotten you are only sixteen and still entitled to a caregiver - "

He let go of her to cover his ears with his hands. "Caregiver? You must stop - "

She kept hold of his torso and kept talking. "And if no one else is rising to the task of meeting your basic needs, I will, and gladly."

He dropped his hands from his ears, laughing in a low growl. "My basic needs? When you put that way, and it doesn't sound too bad - "

"And foremost," she went on, "you are entitled to be fed a meal every evening. I've been able to hear your stomach rumbling for the last half hour. You should have kept that apple instead of vanishing it off to only the stars know where - "

He shushed her, looking over his shoulders.

But she wasn't finished. "You should see yourself. You've got dark circles under your eyes, and a bruise on your jaw from a fight this morning, and a bump on your head from another one this evening, and I cannot keep your going on snogging energy alone. You need food."

"Fine, we're going to the kitchens," he said.

At some point in their walk down from the seventh floor, Crookshanks had taken leave of them. They hadn't noticed when exactly he turned his brush tail to them and disappeared, probably into a passageway that would have been too dark for them but which suited him fine.

As Draco ate dinner leftovers stacked into a sandwich, Hermione grew restless, pacing, trying to imagine what else Snape had to tell her. She had assumed no one in the school understood Mitrian charms as well as she did after reading and re-reading everything about them in the ancient and elaborate library. Not even Draco knew everything she did about them. She'd made sure of that.

Perhaps Snape was ready to admit what she'd already suspected: that he had purged all of the books on horcruxes from the Hogwarts library - books which would have had references to other corporeal charms in them, including the Mitrians. If Snape was hoarding books, and he was now ready to share, she'd have access to new information, possibly even what she needed to know to use the charm to vex Voldemort. Snape had made Draco believe they could make a difference in the mounting fight against him, and there must be a good reason for that.

By the time they were standing in front of the door to Snape's office, her nervousness had turned into eagerness and it was Draco who was tense. "Just one bit of advice," he cautioned her as he lifted his fist to knock. "Don't mention Harry's mum unless you absolutely can't avoid it. I already rubbed Snape's face in it and I'm not sure he'll tolerate much more."

Inside, Snape wasn't stalking and spinning through his office, but sitting at his desk, still and somewhat faded. "Malfoy and Granger," he announced as they sat in the chairs facing his desk. "Tell me, Draco, where in this unfathomable mess you would like me to begin."

Draco cleared his throat. "It's me who'd better begin, sir." He made his confession, telling Snape everything about the vanishing cabinet on the seventh floor, from Graham Montague's misfortunes with it to the latest test, when it transported an apple to London and back.

He finished, flinching, ready for Snape's fury - for his disappointment that Draco had got so close to compromising the safety of Hogwarts just to save his miserable family, for his anger with Draco for going so long without accepting help, maybe even for a soaring lecture about how the resistance to the Death Eaters would be decimated if anything happened to harm the headmaster.

Instead, Snape merely sighed, deeply and throatily. "So this is how they've been meaning to do it, all this year." He tipped back in his chair. "A more sophisticated plan than your debacle with the necklace, but not by much. Once again the Dark Lord makes a dangerous plaything out of the house of Malfoy."

Snape tented his fingers, bowing into them, his hair falling forward until his face was lost from sight. "Do you know whether your father knows about the cabinet plan, Draco?"

He blinked at the unexpected question. "I don't believe so, sir. Unless mother's told him."

Snape hummed. "Your mother was informed about the cabinets, even in her disordered present state of mind. A foolish risk. Typical of a Malfoy, perhaps, but uncharacteristic of the Dark Lord. More evidence that this scheme was never truly meant to succeed. You see," he paused, his jaw cocked, "what remains to be determined is not whether the headmaster will die. Of course he will, and this makes the question of precisely how he will die somewhat moot. The only matter of any real import, the real question," his speech slowed again, "is that of who will kill him."

Hermione looked suddenly sick. "He - Dumbledore - he's going to die?"

Snape spun his chair in frustration. "Everyone's going to die someday, Granger, particularly those who, like the headmaster, turned one hundred years old while you were still a baby."

"That's not what I meant - "

"We will speak no more of it," Snape called over her protest. "In the beginning, The Dark Lord gave Draco the task of assassinating the headmaster by whatever clumsy methods he could muster as a way to punish his father for prematurely allowing for the opening of the Chamber of Secrets and for botching the raid on the Department of Mysteries. That much was obvious to everyone. Madam Malfoy complicated matters by taking - steps to protect Draco, including obligating me to help and defend him, an obligation he complicated with his stubbornness. She ought to have stopped her meddling there."

Draco couldn't let Snape go on. "I'll allow that Mother is responsible for getting the bumbling Hogsmeade accomplice involved, but don't blame her for the vanishing cabinets. That method was my own idea."

"Yes," Snape sneered. "And haven't you become the victim of your own cleverness? Now you truly are at risk of winding up confronting your headmaster here in his own school where, even with a host of Death Eaters sneaked in at your side, there is very little chance you could harm him against his will. Well done, Draco," he said, sneering more bitterly than ever. "You've managed to provide the Dark Lord with a viable alternative plan."

"An alternative to my family's death sentence? Yes, yes I certainly have."

"There was no need for it. Not when I would have protected you."

Draco barely kept from springing out of his chair. "How? Pardon me, sir, but I fail to see how, in the face of the Dark Lord and all the Death Eaters, one teacher could have saved us all alive."

Snape waved both his hands, as if whisking Draco away, moving on, turning to Hermione. "And here is another victim of their own cleverness: Miss Granger, who, under the influence of ten counter-curse potions, crafted and cast an effective, if modified, Mitrian love charm, and now finds herself occasionally fainting dead away, magically bound as she is to the Dark Lord."

Draco threw himself between them. "Help us then," he interrupted, answering for Hermione who was stunned to see a student, even Draco, talking back to Snape like this. "Tell Hermione what you told me in London. I know we deserve to be scolded. I accept it. But please, sir, finish up and tell her the rest."

"Oh, but now there's more to tell you as well, Draco," Snape said. "If you'd informed me about the cabinet sooner, I would have been able to see it months ago, but as it is…" His words trailed into a sigh. "The killing curse, the same one you were commanded to use on the headmaster, it rends the soul. It tears it. Because of this, the Dark Lord's soul is torn ribbons. It is something he did knowingly and deliberately, a calculated risk we don't yet fully understand. If Potter could stay on task, we might know more, but as it is…"

He trailed off again, forcing a cough to refocus himself, away from Potter, back to the students in front of him.

"As I was saying, that raw, frayed edge of the Dark Lord's soul is what made him as powerful as he is, but it also created a vulnerability. The bonding power of the Mitrian charm mends torn edges, and when the Dark Lord put himself in contact with your charm by attempting to vanish from Draco's arm, it fused with him as well as both of you."

Hermione gasped. "I was afraid that was it."

Snape sneered. "He is, of course, disgusted. And he is also suffering pain and weakness in his wand hand. It's urgent that he free himself and in order to do so, the bond must be torn again. Doubtless, he would gladly tear his own soul, but as he is caught in a subordinate position within the charm's bond, he does not have that power."

Snape flicked a glance at Hermione and Draco. And though Hermione was gaping with shock at the news of being in a position of power over the Dark Lord, he tutted and said, "Don't look so smug, Granger."

She closed her mouth.

"Since he lacks the power to sever the bond," Snape continued, "one of you must be torn - or else eliminated. We have used a Fidelius charm to hide the identity of the caster from the Dark Lord, meaning he cannot eliminate the caster and her familiar."

"Crookshanks?"

He ignored the interruption. "And Draco, to your credit, you have bargained successfully for your life thus far. Which means the Dark Lord seeks to tear your soul not with your own death, but by making you a murderer. If you fail, and die in what is very much a suicide mission to kill the headmaster, the bond will be damaged, perhaps enough for the Dark Lord to free himself."

Snape rose from his chair, leaning over his desk. "And if you succeed, somehow, your soul will be gashed open, the Dark Lord will be free, the headmaster will be dead, and Draco Lucius Malfoy as we know him - " another long pause, "will be lost."

Hermione let out a shaky breath. "Sir," she began, "there's something I haven't told Draco about Mitrian charms - "

"You are speaking of the matrimonial potential of the charm," Snape finished for her. "I thought his assumption that you didn't know about it was unlikely. As for Draco, I have already explained it to him myself. He knows what would be required of him, and he is willing."

She turned toward Draco, gripping the arm of his chair. "You knew? You knew all along that the charm I gave you could be expanded into a powerful marriage spell, one that might injure the Dark Lord? And that's why you kept asking me to marry you?"

He shook his head, his eyes on his knees. "No, I just learned about the marriage part over Christmas. And it's why I stopped asking you."

She swallowed, turning back to Snape. "You-know-who has given Draco a time limit. If the cabinet isn't working by the end of the term, he's going to start killing the Malfoys. I - if you give me access to the books I need - the ones from the REAL restricted section - I might be able to craft a matrimonial spell in time. "

Draco grabbed at her hand. "You can't be forced into marrying me because of some stupid war. That was never what I wanted. There might be something else - "

"Enough with the chivalrous antics, Draco," Snape interrupted. "That's very well, Miss Granger. I do keep a small collection of books on corporeal magic here in my office. You may work on the charm only - only here in my study. We will begin tomorrow. Now, good evening to you both."

There was silence for a moment as Hermione and Draco realized that, despite all the unanswered questions in their minds, they were being dismissed. When the door closed behind them, and they'd climbed the stairs back into the Entrance Hall, Draco fell against the wall, as if physically exhausted. Hermione looked at him, his head tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hide her face in his chest. But instead, she hooked her forefinger through his.

"I get it," she said. "You're sixteen years old, and I'm the only girl you've ever dated, and your parents will - "

Draco's eyelids flung themselves open. "What?"

She was still talking. "And it might not be inevitable. Like you said downstairs, there might be something in those secret books in Snape's office - a solution besides a matrimonial charm. I'll look for that first - "

"You daft girl," he interrupted, tugging her finger with his, pulling her against him, pressing a kiss on the top of her head. "You think it's me who doesn't want to marry you? I don't want you forced into it, but that's hardly the same thing as not wanting…" He couldn't finish. "Look, this isn't how my next proposal happens - you and me arguing at the top of a dungeon stairwell. My proposals were always somewhat serious before, but now - they're not something to trifle with, so I won't."

She hardly ever said it, but she looked up at him now, tired and teary, her mind a whirlwind, and she told him one of the few things she could still be sure of. "I do love you."

She rose on her toes and he bent to kiss her, softly and sweetly in the torch-lit hall. "I'm so glad," he said. "Keep doing that. We'll sort the rest out from there."

* * *

Ron awakened in the blue morning light of the first full day of the second term of his sixth year thinking vaguely but pleasantly about love. He sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes, blinking around the room at the rest of his roommates, all of them still asleep.

Stretching his legs, his foot knocked against a box that had appeared, as if by magic, at the end of his bed during the night. Just like anyone in a new love affair worth its weight, he was not at all surprised to stumble upon signs of how treasured he was, and he smiled at the gift, not questioning its presence or the affectionate good will that must be attached to it.

He was hungry but there was still an hour until breakfast, so he lifted the lid to help himself to two or three chocolate cauldrons - the fancy liqueur types, which his parents usually kept stashed away for just themselves.

He ate in a dreamy, contented haze, thinking about how cherished he was - more than cherished, adored. Four, five, six chocolate cauldrons and he was loved, deeply, profoundly loved. And by the best girl ever, the one with the dark hair and - what else?

She was probably missing him right now. He had to get up - to go see her before their separation made her sad, the way it was making him sad. He had to see the love of his life. But where would she be right now? Harry had the Map. He'd wake him up and ask him to check it for her. Harry would understand the urgency - anyone would. After all this was no mere schoolgirl Ron was in love with. This was her.

This was Romilda Vane.


	24. Chapter 24

**AN: Another chapter that gets dark but, unlike canon, the characters are going to actually grow from it, so I promise it's worth it. Keep going!**

**And thanks for all the great comments and feedback. I love your speculations and suggestions. They are very inspiring, especially since I am writing this chapter by chapter as I go. Living for it! DDD**

Harry Potter was asleep, dreaming.

In the dream - in someone's dream - he was examining a hand by the light of a wand held gingerly in his left hand. He knew the hand he studied was also his own, withered, almost skeletal, coloured a faint radiant blue, as if it was made of crumbling sea ice, and scarred with white lines like the contours of broken shapes and letters.

The sight and sting of it filled him with rage and fear, so much that he was lashing out with a curse from his wand, green light washing over the cowering form of blond-haired boy - or maybe a man. It was a proper curse, properly aimed, and still the boy stood in the light of it, frightened but unharmed.

That pretty idiot Malfoy's boy, besting his intellect, withstanding his magic, corrupting his body - HOW?

He wanted murder, blood, and he lunged and pushed, screaming until the boy was bleeding on the floor crawling…

...and someone was shaking him awake in his bed.

Harry woke up snarling, "Malfoy…"

"No, it's me, Harry," Ron was saying.

He was leaning into Harry's face, close enough that Harry could smell the chocolate on him. Harry pawed his night-table for his glasses as Ron babbled frantically, trying to peel Harry away from his bedsheets, jamming his hand under Harry's pillow.

"Will you get off me!" Harry called over Ron's ranting.

"Just give me the Map, Harry. I need to find her."

Harry looked at the clock. "It's not quite 6:30 am. She'll be in bed, in the dungeons. Leave her be."

Ron's face flicked from frantic to terrified, mouth gaping open, eyes wide. "In the dungeons? No, we've got to get her out. My wand - "

He was flipping his bed linens onto the floor, searching them for his wand. Harry was watching dumbfounded when the empty box of chocolate cauldrons tumbled out of Ron's bed and onto the floor.

Ron's terror was developing into fury. He was muttering, "Take my Romilda and put her in the dungeons while I sleep. Well, they've got another thing coming."

Harry sighed into his hands. That bleeding love potion. "Had a bit of chocolate for breakfast, did you Ron?"

Wand in hand, Ron spun around to face Harry. "Come with me. I might be outnumbered. We can't take any chances when it comes to her. Get up, Harry, we've got to save my Romilda!"

"Right." Harry played along, but listlessly. "To the dungeons."

He would rather go to Slughorn for a love potion antidote than to Snape, but with Ron already bent on a trip to the dungeons, he would settle for that. Snape might also be cross enough about the situation to do something about the trade of love potions in the school. Slughorn, on the other hand, was more likely to just wax nostalgic about it.

Harry sprinted after Ron, down the stairs, snagging him by the collar of his T-shirt as they landed in the Entrance Hall. "Not that stairway," he tugged him away from the Slytherin dorms, steering him toward Snape's office. "Over here."

"You're late!" a voice called out across the Entrance Hall.

Harry swore. It was Pansy Parkinson, standing up from a bench where she'd been waiting. She was dressed for flying.

"This was all your idea. It was you that said to meet here at 6 am. And look at you, still in your pajamas," she said, pacing toward them, scolding but with a bend to her lips that showed it was her way of warming up to him. "And you've brought a chaperone, have you? What're you playing at, Weasley?" As she said it, she ruffled Ron's hair.

He gasped, recoiling as if violated. "It was you. You did it. You took her and now you're taunting me."

Pansy scowled. "Took her? Who is 'her,' Ronald?"

Ron straightened out of his recoiling posture. "Don't you 'Ronald' me. Just bring back Romilda. I don't like to fight little girls, but for Romilda, I will."

"Romilda? Romilda Vane?"

"Yes, my darling girl Romilda. It's awful. Something's happened - "

"Oh, something awful's going to happen, alright - " Pansy was swearing and threatening, jumping at Ron, trying to get hold of his hair again, only with a much different spirit.

Harry inserted himself between them, a hand on Ron's chest, pushing him backward, shouting over Pansy. "There's been an accident, Parkinson. Ron ran into a love potion intended for someone else, and he's out of his mind."

It just seemed to make her angrier. "Another potion, is it? How convenient. First it was Felix Felicis with Lavender Brown, and now this?"

"It's my fault, Parkinson," Harry was saying. "It was meant for me, and I knew it but I had a bad night and didn't - "

Ron had swerved around the pair of them and was sprinting toward the dungeons.

Harry called after him, hollering his name, Ron ignoring him. Desperate, he yelled, "I found Romilda! Ron, she's not in the dungeons. I was wrong about that. She's upstairs with Slughorn."

Ron skidded to a stop in his house slippers, pivoted back toward the marble staircase, running past Pansy without so much as a glance.

"We're off to get the antidote," Harry said to her, running backward after Ron. "Come find him later. He'll be fine by then, I swear."

Pansy stood, eyes smarting, watching the boys disappear up the stairs - up to Slughorn's office, and whatever waited there.

* * *

Hermione lay in bed, blinking in the dawning sunlight. She was going over the situation with Draco, Snape, and the Death Eaters, trying to think of a way to organize it into a coherent story she could explain to Harry without sending him off in a ferocious rage. She had promised to explain it all to him this morning, before classes began.

She dressed herself and sat in the common room, waiting, lifting her head from her book every time a boy came down the dormitory steps. Finally, Seamus appeared.

"They're not upstairs no more. Haven't seen them since they woke up early, shouting and running out in their nightclothes with their wands drawn. Sorry, Hermione. I've learned by now it's usually best just to leave them to it."

She sat for a moment more, lips pursed, foot tapping, deliberating whether it would be better to wait for them to come back, or to chase through the castle after them. With a frustrated sigh, she stood up and went down to breakfast.

The boys weren't in the Great Hall. Hermione thought about asking Pansy if she'd seen them but she wasn't there either.

Without eating much, she stepped outside the dining hall, to where Draco was waiting to snag her sleeve and pull her behind one of the massive doors. He kissed her quickly, asking, "You look annoyed. How did it go, explaining everything to Potter?"

"It didn't," she said. "He and Ron are both missing. It's beginning to alarm me."

She was looking up into Draco's face, her expression darkening, brows drawing toward each other. "Your - people," she began. "They wouldn't have - done anything - to Harry - would they?"

Draco frowned back at her. "No one had any plans as far as I know. And like you saw, the cabinet is still broken. But…"

He could promise her nothing. The Death Eaters and everyone anywhere near them were completely mad, unpredictable.

Draco nodded. "We'd better find them."

"No," she said. "I'll find them. You just stay out of their way. If something's happened they might be - volatile. Lay low, be safe, and come find me if you see them."

They parted with another quick kiss before Draco slunk out from behind the door, Hermione waiting until he was out of sight to emerge herself.

"Hermione!"

It was Parvati Patil, trotting across the Entrance Hall toward her. "Is he alright? I just heard. It's so horrifying. Who do you think is responsible?"

Hermione shook her head, unable to make sense of any of it.

"Don't tell me you don't know?" Parvati raved, her mouth spread in something between an incredulous gape and a grin. "Ron Weasley's been poisoned, this morning in the potion master's study."

Hermione's face blanched white.

"He didn't die," Parvati rushed to say. "Harry found a bezoar and saved him. Slughorn was bloody useless from the sounds of it."

"Hospital wing?" was all Hermione said.

Pavarti shrugged. "I reckon so."

Hermione bounded down the corridor, toward the hospital wing. Ron must have just been brought in while the rest of the school was having breakfast. Curtains were drawn around Ron's bed, and Hermione could see three pairs of shoes pacing back and forth behind it.

Harry was standing outside the curtain, still in his pajamas. Hermione flew at him, grabbing at his arms, frantic for an explanation. He told her about the love potion from Romilda Vane.

"Thanks to your warning, I didn't drink it myself," Harry said. "And though I wouldn't call a love potion harmless, it was nothing compared to the second poison Ron drank this morning."

He told her about the deadly oak-matured mead in Slughorn's office, adding, in his humble way, the bit about the bezoar he found just before it would have been too late to save Ron's life.

She threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, Harry. The Chosen One, indeed. Thank the stars for you."

He didn't return her hug, standing cold and stiff between her arms.

Harry's voice was level and cool as he said, "Where did Slughorn get poisoned mead, Hermione? Why was it in a bottle he was supposed to give to Dumbledore as a Christmas gift?"

She stepped back, releasing him, wiping her eyes.

"Well, where did Slughorn say he got it?" she asked. "Shouldn't we start there? I mean, it wouldn't be much of an investigation if we just sat in here speculating and never went back to the source to ask him. If this was a mystery novel, that'd be a bit of plot-hole, wouldn't it?"

Harry shrugged. "Maybe. But do we have to bother Slughorn when most everything about this attack is already so familiar?"

Hermione frowned. He was being unreasonable, jumping to conclusions, getting that hard, mad look on his face that came over him when he was about to link a crime to Draco. She braced herself, knowing that Harry's paranoia about Draco had a much greater basis in fact than she'd ever imagined before yesterday.

He went on. "You know what it reminds me of, don't you? The bottle of wine is like the hexed necklace Katie carried back from Hogsmeade. Deceptively attractive but creepy contraband contaminated with something deadly, brought into the castle and set loose, nudged in Dumbledore's direction but so carelessly it takes out an innocent student instead."

Hermione swallowed through a dry throat. No one had managed to pin the necklace attack on the Malfoys. But no one had exonerated them either. In Harry's mind, they had always been guilty. And Hermione could not deny it.

"The similarities are too great for it to be an accident," Harry said. "Our best friend almost died this morning, thanks to all of this. What do you have to say about it, Hermione? I'm still waiting. What can you possibly say to defend him now?"

The curtains around Ron's bed were flung open with a flourish that could only be that of Professor Snape. He, Dumbledore, and Madam Pomfrey appeared standing around Ron's bed. Ron himself was tucked tightly beneath a sheet, sleeping.

"Harry, Miss Granger," Dumbledore greeted them. "Oh, and here comes Miss Weasley too. Harrowing morning for Mr. Weasley, to be sure. But thanks to Harry's quick thinking and decisive action, he should be quite alright after a few days' rest and curative potions. Isn't that right, Professor Snape?"

"Indeed."

"No," Harry hissed. "I won't have Snape laying a hand on Ron."

Ginny took his arm, whispering his own name into his ear. "It's alright, Harry."

"Yes, never fear, Harry," Dumbledore said, one hand on Snape's elbow as he stood between Harry and the headmaster, rolling his eyes. "Mr. and Mrs. Weasley have been consulted and they have enthusiastically consented to Ron's treatment by our Hogwarts staff including Professor Snape. They are on their way here, as we speak. You needn't be bothered by it."

"I am bothered by it," Harry said, backing away even though it meant Ginny had to let go of his arm.

"Harry, we need to talk," Hermione called after him as he turned and stormed out of the room. "Harry, wait."

She was loud enough that Ron stirred in his bed. "Hermione?"

Dumbledore swept his arm toward her, inviting her to come sit by the bed. "Come along girls, do sit down. Mr. Weasley is in need of company and comfort."

Ginny linked arms with Hermione. "Just for a bit," she said. "Pansy should get wind of it and come flying in soon. Might be the only peace we have with him for a while."

Hermione shot one more glance at the door through which Harry had disappeared, sighed, and sat on the edge of Ron's bed.

* * *

The moment Draco heard that potions class was canceled due to the unfortunate poisoning of Ron Weasley in the potion master's chambers that morning, he bolted to his dormitory, to the locked chest under his bed where he kept the enchanted coin he had used in the Fall to communicate with his mother's accomplice in Hogsmeade.

He hadn't touched the coin in months, not since Katie Bell was hexed. But the poisoning accident was so similar to the necklace attack, he couldn't shake a sickening feeling that his mother - his desperate, deranged, now drugged mother - might have activated her accomplice to try to help him once again.

In his room, he waved his wand to unlock the chest, blew out a long breath to steel himself, and opened the lid. The coin lay on the green velvet bottom of the box. It was warm to his touch, and when he turned it over in his fingers, there was an unread message on it.

"Goods delivered. Slughorn for Dumbledore."

He swore, re-locking the coin inside the box, kicking it under the bed. His mother and her accomplice had almost killed Ron Weasley today, Hermione's best friend. And if anyone ever discovered the source of the poisoned mead, he would almost surely be implicated in it.

What was he supposed to do now?

Hermione would be in the hospital wing with Weasley. Potter would be there too. Just as he'd done after Katie Bell's hexing, Draco's best chance was to act like all of it had nothing to do with him. He had to be normal, and that meant calming down, neutralizing his too-expressive face, and reporting for his next class.

He left the dormitory, setting off down the corridor through his gossiping classmates, moving too quickly to catch more than snatches of their speculations on the crime. But all the conversations seemed the same.

"It was meant for Potter, of course. As if the chosen one would fall for that…"

"It was a Weasleys Wizard Wheezes love potion that had gone off. So dangerous, the way that shop will swap its potions' labels just to outwit Filch. Honestly, that store is a menace…"

"Love potion? That explains why he was snogging Pansy Parkinson yesterday, out of nowhere. Looks like that blew up in her face…"

"Maybe it was a potion from someone trying to win Weasley back from Parkinson. Didn't he and Granger used to…"

"No, isn't she running around with that Death Eater trash, as if no one can tell..."

"How could she be, after all this…"

"You don't think HE could have…"

Malfoy was sweating, tugging at his tie, loosening his collar. There was pressure in his throat, something rising from his gut. He was going to be sick. He swore. This was why it was better for him not to eat. If he had to be sick, it wouldn't do for him to do it in a bathroom where everyone could hear him, stoking gossip about him being caught up in today's disaster.

He fled his classmates, climbing higher, to the deserted, dilapidated bathroom on the sixth floor.

* * *

Harry had left the hospital wing to hunt for Malfoy. Map in hand, he hurried down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower, to the sixth floor, to the bathroom where the dots of Malfoy and Moaning Myrtle had just appeared. From the doorway, he heard her wheedling voice, begging Malfoy to confide in her.

"You can't help me," Malfoy was saying, sobbing, leaning over the skin, clenching its edge with both his hands. His face was a grayish green, as if he'd just been sick.

With his head bowed over the sink, he didn't see Harry standing behind him in the cracked mirror. Harry tucked the Map into his robes, and drew his wand. He stood silently, waiting to be noticed. And as he did, last night's dream settled over him again. He was the mind he had dreamed - hurt, violated, enraged. The heart he'd had in the dream returned as well, with all its poison desires. He wanted Malfoy to fall and crawl - to bleed.

"I know you did it, Malfoy."

He wheeled around to face Harry, tears still smeared across his face, his expression drawn into a snarl like a frightened animal. His eyes widened at the sight of Harry's wand fixed at his chest. He straightened up, drawing his own wand, his chest heaving, his blood still pulsing with the rush of adrenaline from his spell of vomiting.

Harry took a step closer, and as he did Draco panicked, firing a hex from his wand. Whether it was meant to miss and smash against the wall over Harry's shoulder, Harry couldn't tell.

Soon, it hardly mattered. Pandemonium was descending over the bathroom. Myrtle was screaming and pleading as Harry and Draco exchanged curses, their fear and rage building, the porcelain and glass of the bathroom shattering and crashing, cold water spraying from broken pipes and basins, flowing lazily toward the drains, pooling over their feet.

Frustrated and furious, Harry finally lashed out with a spell he'd just discovered and which he'd been waiting to try for days.

"Sectumsempra!"

The curse left his body with something more than the satisfaction of curiosity indulged. It flared through his flesh, from the scar at the top of his head, to the soles of his feet, with a feeling he had never known before. It was bloodlust, pounding in his heart and ears, filling him with wicked pleasure that a dark part of him savoured while the rest of him shrunk back, revolted.

Myrtle screamed, the water sprayed, and Malfoy lay choking, his body carved open, bleeding to death.


	25. Chapter 25

**AN: Lightening up a bit today. Enjoy!**

The double doors to the hospital wing flung themselves open. Everyone inside turned to look: Madam Pomfrey, Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger - even a very groggy Ron twitched and blinked and struggled to sit up to have a better look.

It was worth the strain. Through the doors came Professor Snape and a tall student with what looked like dark blond hair, his head lolling forward, hiding his face. Both of them were soaking wet and the boy's white shirt was splotched with broad rusty stains the girls recognized immediately as water-logged blood.

Madam Pomfrey ran at them, "My stars, Severus, what is it now?"

All he said to her as she threw the boy's dangling arm over her shoulder was, "Privacy."

With his weight supported between two people, the boy's head lolled back instead of forward, his face tipping into view. At first, his classmates didn't recognize him, distracted as they were by a jagged red mark slashed from his left ear to his chin. It was the colour of blood, but not bleeding, flesh healed magically, and very recently, newly closed over the angles of the boy's pale, sharp cheekbones and jawlines.

Hermione gasped, her hand clamping claw-like around Ron's arm.

"Malfoy," was Ron's weak exclamation.

As far away from Ron as they could get, Pomfrey and Snape were lowering Malfoy onto a bed. Pomfrey was reaching for her wand. "Hold him up a moment, Severus. The wet shirt will ruin the bedding."

"Leave it," Snape said as he whisked the curtains closed around the bed.

The moment she lost sight of Draco, Hermione seemed to panic, hopping to her feet and trotting across the floor after him. She was just about to slip between the curtains when Snape's face reappeared. "Granger. Good. Come."

Ron swallowed through a raspy throat, trying to clear away the lingering sense of having a bezoar lodged in it so he could speak. "Gin, I need something from you," he said. "Go see if you can find out what Harry's up to."

She left and Ron lay back on his pillows, straining to hear what was happening behind the curtain. Malfoy was panting and moaning, Hermione was murmuring sweetly but sadly to him. It was similar to the tones she'd been using to speak to Ron moments before - but not quite. It took a moment for Ron to discern the difference. When she was comforting him, it was with the voice of someone who was concerned that someone else was hurt. When she spoke to Malfoy, she sounded like she was hurt herself.

Above these small, intimate sounds, was Snape's voice, trying to dismiss Pomfrey. "Dittany, is what's needed," he was saying. "Mr. Malfoy's injuries were such that I had no choice but to administer the appropriate counter-curses on the spot."

Pomfrey responded with the weary, knowing questions of someone accustomed to but not happy about having her medical authority circumvented. "And which counter-curses were those?" she asked.

He named one Ron did not recognize.

There was a pause. "This must have been very Dark magic," Pomfrey said. "You're sure someone used that here in the castle, in broad daylight, against a student?"

"Positive."

"Who could have done it?" she pressed. "He hasn't done it to himself, has he?"

There were four distinct clicks, as Snape stepped closer to her. "Dittany - if - you please." His voice grew lighter as Pomfrey huffed and parted the curtains to fetch the medicine. "Thank you, Poppy. Granger and I will see to cleaning him up."

Madam Pomfrey crossed the floor, pacing through Ron's view, shaking her head and muttering.

Ron closed his eyes as she moved about, not wanting to add embarrassment to her aggravation. But he was only human - a freshly poisoned human - and not long after he closed his eyes, he had fallen back to sleep.

* * *

Snape stood over Draco's bed, his wand flicking through the simple spells needed to clean and dry Draco's clothing. "There," he said. "Now open his shirt and expose him to the shoulders. Leave his arms covered. The wounds are entirely on his face and chest so Madam Pomfrey will have no need to disrobe him. No need. I cannot stress this enough."

"I understand, sir," Hermione said. Her hands shook, her fingers fumbling with the buttons on Draco's now clean and dry shirt. His hair was still wet and dark, his skin blueish with the damp cold.

"No need to be so ginger," Snape sneered from behind her. "The wounds are closed. They're no worse than the mark on his face. You will find them red but not bleeding."

"Do they still hurt?" She was asking Draco.

He shook his head, his breath was still shallow, his teeth gritted. "Not like they did at first. It aches like I've been hit with a beater's bat. I think I'm mostly in shock."

"Maybe don't look then," she said, pushing his shirt open with both of her hands. In every dimension, the wound was larger than she imagined, as if it had been made with a broadsword. Just as Snape said, the skin was closed but blood-red, somehow ragged.

Madam Pomfrey came back with the dittany, just as Snape was preparing to leave. "Abandoning your charge so soon?" she needled him.

"Yes, Poppy, as you can well imagine, I now have some disciplinary matters to attend to," he eased the vial of dittany out of her hands. "Truly, your skills are wasted dabbing dittany on already healing wounds. Allow Granger, if you please. She is quite keen to learn about healing."

This was not untrue.

Madam Pomfrey rolled her eyes. "Please your great kind self, Severus." She bustled away in a swish of starched white skirts.

"Sir!" Hermione called as Snape handed her the vial and prepared to leave. "What are you going to do to him?"

Snape folded his arms. "Him?"

"Yes, him." She knew Draco's injury was Harry's mistake - of course she did.

"I will do," Snape hissed, "what you, Miss Granger, ought to have done hours ago, what the headmaster should have - " He bit back his words. "I will tell him what he needs to know."

* * *

Harry was still standing ankle-deep in the water flooding the sixth floor bathroom, in the din of spraying pipes and Moaning Myrtle's cries of "murder," when Snape sailed back into the room. With a single word, he sent Myrtle away, and with a wave of his hand the pipes ran dry.

In the dripping quiet, he began in an icy voice. "Where - did you learn - that spell?"

Harry's mouth worked without a sound.

"Where," Snape said, his voice quieter than ever, "did the Chosen One himself, learn to use such Dark magic?"

Harry stammered something about a library book as Snape inched closer, crossing the watery stone floor.

"You are lying."

"Then why bother asking?" Harry snapped. "Just assault me with legilimency. Take whatever you want, like always."

"Do you know," Snape called over him, loudly at first, lowering his voice when Harry's fell silent, "why you could not marshal your storied magical talent to learn occulmency, particularly, occulmency against me?"

Harry sneered. "Because I'm an arrogant fraud?"

"Because you hate me," Snape replied. "Hasn't the headmaster told you, and recently, that your power over the Dark Lord has always lay in your ability to love and to receive love?" His face contorted as if the words were a bitter but necessary medicine in his mouth. "It's not a maudlin platitude. And here is proof."

Snape stooped to look Harry in the eyes. "When it comes to magical confrontations between you and me, Potter, the greatest engine of your power is missing. Each time you attempted occulmency, you did so not from your high ground of love, but from a low place of hate for me. And from this place, you can only fail."

Snape straightened his posture. "This is why it had to be me to teach you to resist the Dark Lord, the murderer of your parents, whom you also hate. We reasoned that, if you could learn occulmency against me, in spite of your hate for me, there might have been a chance of you learning it against the Dark Lord as well. But as we learned, it cannot be done, not by you, not as you are."

The was a paused as Snaped walked in a circle around Harry. As for Harry, he stood in the receding water, waiting, not knowing what to expect next of this interview now that they were talking about Voldemort instead of punishment.

As if he could hear Harry's thoughts, Snape asked, "What did you think your discipline would be, Potter? You used Dark magic to attack a classmate with a curse which would have been fatal without swift attention from someone who happened to know its obscure and difficult countercurse - "

"I didn't know what the spell would do - "

" - which makes you more culpable, not less," Snape said.

"How do you reckon that?"

"Now, I ask you," Snape continued, ignoring Harry's objections, "what kind of discipline do your actions warrant? A talk with your head of house, complete with alarming but empty threats of expulsion? And then what - detention? Even weeks and weeks of Saturday detentions, sabotaging your sports schedule, and me taunting you about it, as if your childish games matter in the least?"

Harry couldn't answer, too tense to even shrug.

"No, Potter. The situation is much more grave than lectures and detention and lost trophies. Well beyond schoolhouse remedies."

Harry hung his head. "Are you going to turn me over to the Aurors?"

Snape sniffed. "No, but you are extremely fortunate that Malfoy's parents are indisposed at present, or else they would be clamouring for exactly that."

Harry blinked. What was wrong with Malfoy's mother? She looked well enough at Madam Malkin's this fall.

But Snape had no more to say about her. "Tell me, Potter, when you cursed Mr. Malfoy, how did you feel? Where was your heart? WHO was your heart?"

Who - was that the question? Harry stood on the same floor where he'd fallen to his knees beside Malfoy's bleeding, speechless body, and contemplated the events that lead up to that moment. He swayed in his soggy shoes, feeling himself growing sick, as he returned to his memory of the fight - revisiting the sensations and emotions - the bloodlust that had engulfed him as he made his final, devastating attack.

Snape watched the transformation, finally breaking the silence. "Your connection to the Dark Lord is the kind that ought to have corrupted you, brought you to his side. You have not been tempted because you have managed to react to him mostly out of a desire to love and protect others. But when you react to me or," he paused, "to Draco Malfoy, without a shred of tenderness or affection, you no longer have that protection. Your hate for us is your weakness, a hold the Dark Lord has over your heart."

"But that's not true. There was love involved when I confronted Malfoy, just not for him. Sir, he brought that poisoned mead into the castle where my best friend, the one held as my treasure from the bottom of the Black Lake - "

"That may have begun as your motivation for seeking out Malfoy," Snape interrupted. "But as you fought, curse upon curse, the circumstances ceased to matter. You came to fight him purely from a place of hate - from the basic, filthy roots of your connection to the Dark Lord."

Harry opened his mouth to argue. Snape was wrong. He was the Chosen One. His side was the right one - the very fact that he was on it made it the right one.

The egotism of the thought shook him. The new wave of sickness crashed over him. Harry sank to sit on the dirty, wet floor. Malfoy's blood had been rinsed away, down the drains, but Harry remembered the look of it, swirling on the surface of the cold water. He felt exposed, used, vulnerable to darkness that had washed over him so many times before, but which had never succeeded in seeping inside him, until today.

He choked out a dry sob. "Sir, I had a dream last night," he confessed from the floor.

Snape spun in a circle, his black eyes wide. "Yes?"

Harry swallowed back his shame. "It was like the one I had the night Arthur Weasley was attacked by the snake in the Ministry. I was seeing through Voldemort's eyes again - he was attacking a blond boy, using his wand in the wrong hand. And then when I was here, with Malfoy, I saw through those eyes again. Only I was me, in this room, and I was awake where I could hurt him. So I did."

Snape opened his mouth, baring his teeth to let out a long breath.

"Professor Snape," Harry said, looking up from the floor. "Help me."

Snape bent to seize Harry by his cold, wet, bloodied shirt, lifting him to his feet. "The time has come for you to work with, rather than against Draco Malfoy. Miss Granger's participation will be vital in this. As you recall, she has much to tell you. You must not take any more action until you have spoken to her. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now when you hear her account, you will be tempted to react in anger, but you must not succumb to that temptation. The angrier you become, the closer the Dark Lord draws to your mind and he must not see what I, Malfoy, and yes, Granger too, have been working on. Calm, Potter. Do you hear me? You cannot succeed in your mission alone - "

"I'm not alone," Harry interrupted, not defiantly but desperately. "I'm with Dumbledore."

Snape winced, as if wounded. "The headmaster," he said, "will not be with you forever, Potter. He is old, battle weary. To prepare for the time when he is gone, you need all the allegiances you can get, including Draco Malfoy's, especially as it pertains to Miss Granger."

Harry shook his head. "Sir, I don't understand."

"No, but you will." Snape let go of Harry's shirt. "The pair of them are in the hospital wing. Clean yourself up and go speak with them. Let them help you. Control your anger, and your hate. They are the ways and means of the Dark Lord. If you do not resist them you will be lost, and many, many others with you."

* * *

Hermione sat in a chair pushed as close to Draco's bed as it could go. Exhausted from the shock, he lay asleep, his hair now dry, light and wildly out of order, his shirt still open but most of his torso tucked under a sheet except for where he'd pulled Hermione's arm inside the covers with him, pressing her palm against his stomach. She sat feeling his abdomen rising and falling, alive and healing, until she drifted off to sleep herself.

It was a difficult position in which to rest, and she was soon awake again, sliding her hand out of his, smoothing the sheet, bending over his sleeping face to examine his wound. The dittany had improved the look of it while they'd slept. Would it scar? Draco would still be beautiful even if it did, but she hoped, mostly for Harry's sake, that it wouldn't.

Gently, slowly, she lifted the sheet from his chest. The wound there was worse. What kind of spell would do this? It must have come from a book she didn't have that Harry did. And there was only one book that matched that description, the Half-blood Prince's copy of "Advanced Potions."

"Harry Potter, I TOLD you…" she muttered.

"Don't call me Harry Potter," Draco said, his eyes still closed.

She leaned toward his face, pressing a barely-there kiss on his unslashed cheek. "You're awake. How are you now?"

He hummed. "I feel - less terrible."

"Good," she said. "Snape wants you to check out of here as soon as possible. It's better for your - privacy." She held his left forearm, pulsing her grip around it.

He nodded miserably. "Right."

She was looking down at him as he opened his eyes. He smirked back at her. "Stop with the sad faces. It's not that tragic, is it?" he said. "Maybe if Snape hadn't been right there… I don't know why he was. Maybe because of that vow?"

Hermione nodded. "I hope he comes back soon. I'm dying, not knowing what he's done with Harry."

"He will still have classes to teach today, won't he? Looks like he may be gone for hours," Malfoy said, patting the mattress beside himself. "Have a lie down. Come on, Granger. It's not like we haven't cuddled up in the hospital before."

She scoffed. "In the middle of the school day, with you half-undressed?"

He tugged at her hand. "Please, Hermione. Do it for medical reasons. I'm still cold. I need warmth, and you can't leave me alone, and that must mean not even to get another blanket. Snape's orders, remember?"

She sighed but slid herself onto the bed beside him.

"That's not how you warm someone up. We both need to be underneath the covers."

"Don't press your luck, Malfoy." She grinned against his arm. With caution so slow it was almost comical, she draped her arm over his waist, on top of the sheet, where she wouldn't disturb his wounds. He turned his face to settle his uninjured cheek against her forehead.

"It was different, you know," he said. "This fight with Potter - it was different than every other time we've fought each other. I mean, he's always mad at me, but he's never been - cruel. I've been an arse to more people than I can remember in my time, but there is only one other person to ever look at me as hatefully as Potter did when he cursed me this morning."

She nestled closer against his side. "You mean this Christmas, at the manor, when you were called before - "

"Yes, him. When he couldn't get me to reveal the name of the witch who cast my charm."

She moaned softly against his arm, turned her face up to his, and he kissed her lips as ardently as his injuries would allow.

All at once, there was shouting from outside the curtains.

Hermione sat up. "That's Ron."

She sprang to her feet and opened the curtain. Pansy Parkinson was standing in the centre of the ward. She had her back to Hermione, yelling at Ron.

"I am not here to see you," she was saying. "I came for Draco."

Ron was calling back to her through his abraded throat, his voice hoarse and pained. "Please, Pansy. I hardly know Romilda Vane. I don't care about her at all. Even under the influence of her potion, I didn't touch her. I didn't even see her."

She tossed her bobbed hair. "Enough, Ronald. That's two potions, two girls, two betrayals in as many months. It's too many!"

She was spinning around to march into Draco's enclosed space when Ron hefted himself out of bed. Still too weak to walk more than a few steps, he staggered toward her, falling across the floor, snagging the back of her robes. He didn't mean to drag her to the ground, but found himself lying in a heap on the floor with her all the same.

Pansy screeched in surprise. "Get off me, Weasley. What're you playing at? Going to kiss my feet again?"

"If you like," he said, his voice quiet, a wheeze. "Come on, Pansy. You heard Harry this morning. Who drinks a love potion on purpose? Of course it was an accident. It wasn't even meant for me. I'm collateral damage. Please, Pan-zee-eh…"

His voice trailed off, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Pansy screeched again, taking Ron's head in her hands. "Madam Pomfrey! Somebody! Help us!" She was patting his freckled cheeks, calling his name.

Madam Pomfrey came trotting out of her office. "Mr. Weasley, what are you doing out of bed so soon?"

Ron was coming around again, murmuring, turning his face into the front of Pansy's robes.

"Over here, Mr. Weasley," Madam Pomfrey said, "Let's see your pupils - yes, he's fine now, just woozy. Back in bed."

Pansy helped Madam Pomfrey raise Ron from the floor, shuffling with him toward his cot. Long-armed and agile even when injured, he managed not to lose contact with Pansy's body as they laid him on his back and tucked him beneath the covers. When Madam Pomfrey left them, striding away shaking her head yet again, he wrapped both his arms around Pansy and pulled her torso on top of his.

She batted weakly at his chest. "You are ridiculous, Ron Weasley."

"Yes, now you're getting it. I'm sorry, but this is what my life with the Chosen One has been like, all this time. Look at this," he said, raising his bare arm to where she would have to look at it. "Have you noticed these? They're my disembodied brain tentacle scars."

"Your wot?"

"Dead sexy, right?"

She laughed at him, lightly slapping his chest again.

"Listen," he said, his forefinger under her chin, tipping her head so she'd look up at him. "I want you to stay with me. But it's high time I just came out and warned you that, if you do, it will be ridiculous sometimes, and a bit dangerous, at least until Harry vanquishes You-know-who and we all live happily ever after. So knowing that, can you do it? Can you stay? Please stay, love."

She reached across his body, tracing a swirling scar down the length of his arm. "I can stay."


	26. Chapter 26

The moment Ron pulled Pansy onto his hospital bed with him, Hermione stepped back out of view of them, drawing the curtains closed around Draco's bed.

Draco raised an eyebrow at the sight of her smiling after all the shouting. "Everything alright out there?"

"Yes. Pansy's here, and they appear to be set on out-romancing us before she has to get back to class."

Draco scoffed, pushing himself to sitting in his bed.

Hermione rushed to help ease him up, propping pillows behind him. "Careful, Draco. There's no need for you to be moving about yet."

But he was through with being eased and tended, and also slightly offended at the idea of Weasley "out-romancing" him. As Hermione's fussing and tucking went on around him, he grasped her wrist, tugging, tipping her off balance so she'd tumble into his lap.

"Draco, mind your cut - "

Without flinching, he swept her up and held her against himself in spite of his wound, bringing both of them into a pose like the cover of a Veela romance novel, his white hair wild from being slept on wet, his bare chest exposed, clutching his loved one as she gazed up at him with wide eyes.

She was about to right herself, to stand up, when he said, "You're on assignment from Professor Snape to stay here and care for me. Today, I am your homework. Don't think of getting up and following Pansy to class when the noon hour is over."

"Don't you boss me. You know I won't leave," she said. "But you've got to be careful - "

"It's fine," he said. "Might just be that painkilling draught Pomfrey gave me, but it feels alright to hold you like this." He gathered her closer. "May actually feel better."

Hermione grew still, her eyes level with the ragged red mark slashed high on his chest. "Your face will recover completely, I think. But this one will scar," she cooed, grazing the skin next to it with her fingertips.

He forced a shrug. "No great loss. After what happened at the manor this summer, I was already out of the shirts-off set, wasn't I?"

The darkly flippant observation did nothing to diminish the sadness of it, and Hermione turned her face to kiss the firm, warm, white flesh below the wound. She had never kissed his bare skin so far below his clavicles before. Even in his injured, lightly drugged state, Draco shivered at the touch of her warm, sweet mouth and breath, suddenly intensely aware of his own state of undress, and the lack of the usual barriers between them.

He was so close to her. She'd almost lost him today, but here he was now, safe and healing. She needed him closer, and she began to trace a line of kisses along his chest, beneath his new scar.

He let out a shaky breath, his head tipping back, his arms still holding her tightly. "Hermione…"

She stopped at once. "Does it hurt?"

He laughed, low and soft. "Not at all."

She sighed, sinking languidly into his arms, pressing her cheek against his heartbeat. "You're alive. I'm so glad you're alive."

His voice was low and husky. "Yes, I'm quite alive."

There were loud voices outside the curtain again, not shouting but greeting.

"Mr. and Mrs. Weasley are here," Hermione interpreted. She felt something slip in Draco's grip, as if he'd just remembered something terribly sad.

"My parents aren't coming." Draco swallowed. "It's impossible. How could my mother show her face here, in front of Mrs. Weasley, or anyone, really, after all this? Did you know that's how the poisoned mead got in here? The same way as the necklace: my mother's murderously incompetent accomplice again."

She frowned. "I didn't want to believe it, but I had thought of it already."

He wasn't looking into Hermione's face anymore, but staring into the distance, such as it was in the small, curtained space around them. Here he was, Draco Lucius Malfoy, the boy who had built most of his life around his identity as a son, and now he was all but orphaned - his father in prison, his mother sick and demented, maiming random students. There was no one but his head of house left to act as his parent. Was this something like how it had always been for Potter?

Hermione's fingers were on his chin. Without a word, she was calling him back to her, and he was about to turn his eyes to her when he noticed a pair of feet in damp-looking shoes stepping up to the outer edge of the curtain.

His heart lurched, a rush of nerves and blood sending a tingle through his wounds.

"Come in."

Hermione's head jerked to see who he was inviting inside.

Harry Potter's hand parted the curtain. He had changed out of his blood-stained clothing, washed himself, but the traces of the fight were still visible in his body - in the way he held his jaw clenched, his shoulders tense.

His pained look was amplified when he saw Hermione caught up in Draco's romance-novel-cover embrace. Harry had known since shortly after the beginning of their relationship that they were together. Early on, he'd seen Draco kiss her twice. That was years ago now - years since he'd seen them together as a couple.

This was different. Unlike the kisses he'd seen, this wasn't a public show, a stunt. This was a glimpse of their real life together, Hermione's life, the one Harry could usually believe he shared with her. But all along, ever since the middle of fourth year, this is what a large part of her life had actually been like - a part she kept completely separate from him. She loved Draco Malfoy. It wasn't just gossip. And even though Harry had just been hugged and kissed by the Weasleys on the other side of the curtain, seeing Hermione so deeply involved with Draco left him feeling lonely, more motherless than ever.

She seemed to know, and maybe it was more than shyness or good manners that had her scrambling to disentangle herself from Draco, returning to her bedside chair. "Harry," she greeted him.

Now that they'd separated, Harry stepped further inside the curtains. The first part of his visit would be simple, if not easy. He would be a monster if he didn't say it - or at least, an utter failure at developing his character.

"Malfoy, I'm sorry I did this to you," he said without qualification. "I hadn't used that spell before and didn't know what it would do. I had no idea it was so dangerous, and it was reckless of me. I apologize."

The words were sincere but automatic, like a recording he made in his head while he stood in the shower, washing away the traces of the blood and dirty water, and which he was replaying for Malfoy now, like a well-programmed machine.

But the calm circumspection of his apology was covering a flow of acidic thoughts and feelings threatening to burn through his resolve to follow Snape's orders to remain civil. Since he arrived, Harry had only glanced at the red slashes on Malfoy's chest and face. Looking more closely at them now, he saw that Snape and Pomfrey had done well in treating them, and the gory, dying Malfoy he'd seen on the floor of the flooded bathroom was no more. Harry was not a murderer.

Seeing that Malfoy would recover freed Harry's anxiety to fix on other things, like the fact that even though Malfoy should have been stripped down for his treatment, his arms were still fully covered by his sleeves.

And where was his mother? Was there some reason she couldn't leave Malfoy Manor to come storming into the school demanding justice, the way the Malfoys had done when Draco had his brush with Buckbeak?

And then there was still the question of what was going on in the Room of Hidden Things. Everything Hermione had promised to tell him the night before was still unspoken.

Before any of that was addressed, Harry waited as Malfoy accepted his apology with a modest shrug. "Right. I deserved worse," he said. "It was me who lobbed the first hex today. And I am sorry about your nose."

Harry nodded, his hand absently rising to smooth the repaired bridge of his nose, not knowing what to say next.

Snape had assured him Hermione would make this difficult exchange possible, and she did. She stood up from her chair, patting him on the shoulder. "I don't hear the Weasleys anymore. Are they gone already?"

Harry nodded again. "Just for a bit. Now they've seen Ron's alive, they're meeting with Dumbledore. They'll be back."

"Well, go fetch Ron then, would you? We are about to tell you everything, Harry." She said it with an air of grandness. "And I'd rather not have to rehearse the whole thing a second time for Ron."

Slouched into the corner of a wheelchair, Ron was rolled to the foot of Malfoy's bed, Harry leaning over the chair's handles.

"True confession time, at long last, is it?" Ron said, awake and upright but still a small, faded version of himself.

Hermione took in an enormous breath. "If we are going to tell the both of you everything, it means a long and complicated story told from its very beginning. And so you must stay until the end. No righteous rushing off in the middle."

Ron gestured at his chair. "Well, I'm an inmate here. Harry?"

He nodded. "Let's have it. _Muffliato_."

She needed another breath. "So after their defeat at the Department of Mysteries, the Death Eaters retreated to Malfoy Manor. Everyone assumed as much, but it's true. The inner circle is sheltered there right now, even You-know-who himself."

Ron scoffed. "Lucky you."

Hermione shushed him but Draco was answering for himself. "It was no honor. They came rushing in to execute us. But mother offered them asylum in the house. And father - he offered them me. He was desperate to keep us all alive and a Hogwarts student the Dark Lord could use as an operative inside the castle was one of the few things Father had left to bargain with. If I was braver and better, maybe I would have let him kill us as soon as I knew. But instead…"

Draco reached across his wounded chest to slide his left arm out of his shirt sleeve, baring the Dark Mark to Harry and Ron.

Ron gasped and looked away.

Harry's entire body jolted forward, toward the mark, as if he was barely holding himself back from pouncing on Malfoy, tearing him open all over again - or at least from springing forward to pull Hermione away from him, back to their side.

"Say it, Potter," Malfoy said, nothing like a smirk in his voice. "Say you knew it all along."

"We've seen it. Put it away," Ron said instead, as if the sight of it was sapping the little strength he had left.

"Not yet," Hermione said, crossing behind the head of the bed to stand on Draco's left side.

'So you're a Death Eater spy," Harry said to Draco.

"Wait, Harry. It's complicated," Hermione said. "When I knew the Mark was inevitable, I inscribed my own charm in the same flesh - a little token of defiance, something You-know-who would see, something to annoy him, and let him know not everyone had given up Draco to the Death Eaters. It was an old charm I read about in a book, and like we saw today, Harry, sometimes spells we've never tried ourselves come with unintended consequences."

Draco still hadn't re-sleeved his arm. "Yes, something went wrong when the Dark Lord tried to remove Hermione's charm before he marked me," He was explaining as Hermione took his arm, her fingers smoothing the blackened skin. "Something went wrong for him, at any rate."

The casualness with which she touched it, the sound of Draco using the title "the Dark Lord," as if Voldemort deserved any respect or reverence, was almost more than Ron could stand.

Hermione noticed his uncomfortable shifting in his chair. "Watch," she said, in a firm voice the boys had long ago learned to obey. "Don't look away."

"Careful," Malfoy whispered as she bent her face over his arm, kissing the remnants of her charm to life. She drew her head back and Draco turned his arm, showing the boys the broken blue light shining on, around, and through the Dark Mark.

Ron gasped again. "Hermione, how in the stars…"

Draco could only nod, hushed, as he usually was whenever the token was visible.

Harry took a step forward. He knew this mark. He'd seen it before, in his nightmares.

Ron choked. "This is the token they found in Malfoy Manor, isn't it? The one they blamed on my Pansy. It was never an object. It was you, you yourself." He sat sputtering for a moment before he managed to say, "Malfoy, how could you ask me to keep Pansy safe without actually telling me how dangerous the situation truly was?"

"I was sure you'd do it properly whether you knew all about it or not," Draco said, not taking his eyes off Hermione's charm. "When it comes to that kind of thing, I suppose I must trust you."

Harry leaned closer, adjusting his glasses. He didn't mean them to, but his fingers were reaching toward Draco's flesh. He came close enough that Draco looked up from the token to watch his advance.

Hermione moved to where she could intervene if she had to. Harry's face was changing, the neutral expression he'd succeeded in maintaining until now was beginning to twist and crack.

"Harry?" Ron said.

As Ron spoke, Harry fell back, crying out, sitting down hard on the ground, the palm of his hand mashed against the scar on his forehead.

Draco jammed his arm back into his sleeve as Hermione fell to her knees beside Harry. 'I'm sorry," she was saying. "I was afraid this might happen to you, but we had to show you anyway."

The splitting pain in Harry's head was ebbing away as the lights of the token subsided. "Why does it hurt him?" Harry managed to say. "Voldemort - why does it hurt him? Why do I see him hurt and enraged and attacking Malfoy over this token in my dreams."

"You see what?" Ron asked.

"It just started. During the holidays," Harry said.

Draco nodded. "Makes sense. Snape says the Dark Lord's soul was split by some Dark magic, and a strong bonding charm, like this one, will attach itself to frayed edges like his. When he tried to vanish it from my arm, it stuck to his damage. And now he's involved in it with us."

"Like a horcrux," Harry said. "Dumbledore's only just confirmed that Voldemort is using horcruxes to keep from dying. The killing curse tears the soul, and in that condition, it's possible to use this awful Dark magic called a horcrux to take a part of the torn soul and attach it to something else. Stashing it somewhere, like in Tom Riddle's diary, or even a living thing, like Voldemort's snake."

"Yes, yes," Hermione said, elated as Harry clicked the pieces together. "It's like that, but in a loose, accidental way. And he certainly didn't attach his soul to my charm on purpose. Especially not when he's connected to us in a subordinate position."

Harry perked. "Subordinate?"

"Yeah," Draco said. "Whenever the charm is activated, he gets hurt somehow - I don't understand it but it's awful to see. Worse than watching you come down with a headache any day."

"So just now, with my scar - "

"Yes, he would have been hurt too, wherever he is - or at least, angry," Draco finished.

"And as you saw, when I activate it myself," Hermione went on, 'I'm fine. But when You-know-who does it, like when he attacked Draco, he hurts himself, as always, but - well, the last time he did it, during the holidays, way out in Malfoy Manor, I fainted in my parents' kitchen."

Ron swore. "Oh, of course. It can't be easy, can it? What a mess you're in, Hermione. I don't care how sweet it is, we have to get that thing off Malfoy's arm before you end up like Harry's mum."

The room fell icily silent. Harry got back to his feet. "What about my mum?"

'Listen to me, Ronald," Hermione said. "And you too Harry - you've got to understand. The charm is indeed something like the magic your mother used to protect you from You-know-who. It worked for her. And I might be able to make it work for myself too - "

"No." Harry was pacing between the curtains. "Absolutely not. It did not work for her. She died." He rounded on Malfoy, his finger pointed at his face. "If you really loved her, Malfoy, you would not let her do this. And believe me when I tell you that if she sacrifices herself for you, you'll survive just to be miserable, guilty, angry - "

"Harry," Hermione called over him. "It's not that kind of sacrifice. In fact," she laced her fingers through Draco's. "It might not be a sacrifice at all. Snape is giving me access to the books I'll need to make a matrimonial charm that will be strong enough to cut You-know-who out of the charm we already have. It could even be powerful enough to damage him, weaken him for a few more years, like your mum did, until you and Dumbledore could succeed in a plan to be rid of him for good."

"More time, safer conditions for horcrux hunting?" Ron said.

"Will you shut up?" Harry snapped at him.

"What? It's true confessions day. Snape trusts Malfoy with this and Dumbledore trusts Snape - "

"Enough of that. No more Snape. No, no matrimonial charms," Harry was ranting. "This is completely ludicrous. Hermione is not going to save the world by marrying bloody Malfoy while she's still in school."

Hermione released Malfoy's hand to fold her arms across her chest, widening her stance. "Why not, Harry? Because I'm not the Chosen One?"

"No, because this is mad," he said. "And I won't listen to another word about it until someone tells me what the hell is going on in the Room of Hidden Things."

Draco sighed. "Fair enough."

He told Harry about exactly what Voldemort had expected of him when he sent him back to Hogwarts this year as his student operative - the suicide mission to kill the headmaster, the vanishing cabinets, the deliberately slow repair, the reason Snape made the unbreakable vow, and even his mother's crazed, overzealous attempts to help him by having her bumbling accomplice bring dangerously enchanted goods meant to kill the headmaster into the school.

"And for that, I beg your forgiveness, Ron, on behalf of my mother."

Ron was stunned, somewhat embarrassed by the apology. "No real harm done, I suppose. Not much, anyways. Good job Harry was there…" He didn't want to speak of it anymore.

Harry clapped his hands, once, loudly. "Well, the vanishing cabinet needs to go," he said. "Get me back into that room and let's burn it to a heap of ash."

"And then my mother dies."

"Yeah, welcome to the club."

"Harry, wait," Hermione said. "Draco negotiated a deadline with You-know-who. Either the cabinet is operational by the end of term, or clemency for the Malfoys ends, and they'll all be killed. Don't you see, Harry? If Draco keeps working slowly enough, the deadline buys us time to figure out the matrimonial spell - "

"Don't start with this again - "

"Or," she went on, ignoring his interruption. "Or it gives us time to find whatever else there may be in the old spell books that could damage You-know-who and help you finish your mission as the Chosen One."

Upon hearing this title yet again, Harry rolled his eyes.

"Harry," she said, taking his hands. "You-know-who has taken paths that now make the prophecy inevitable. In the world he's shaped around himself, you are the Chosen One, and it will be you who defeats him. I believe that. But I never believed you would do it alone. And you won't be doing it without love either. Isn't that what Dumbledore told you?"

She sat down on the bed, linking her hand with Draco's again. "Maybe he doesn't just mean your love. Maybe he means my love too. Or more specifically," she lifted their joined hands into her lap, "ours."

Harry's gift of love felt far away as he stood over Malfoy's bed. One apology and some convoluted explanations did not make them friends.

He could see that Malfoy was fading, just as Ron was. Both of them had been cuddling their girls, sitting up, and then having this exhausting conversation far too long for people as badly injured as each of them was. They needed to rest. Malfoy's head had sunk back against his pillows. His white skin had a grey cast to it and his eyelids were heavy. He looked, again, like the boy Voldemort had attacked - the one Harry joined in attacking.

Harry couldn't give in to the urge to storm away, still sworn enemies. Snape had warned him not to and he'd given his word that he wouldn't be angry. He couldn't offer Malfoy friendship yet, but he could offer peace - a deal.

"You make sure your mother sends no more curses into the school, and I will do what I can to support Hermione. I'm not saying I'll be best man at you Hogwarts wedding - "

"Don't worry about that. You won't be - "

"What I'm saying is," Harry paused, clenching his eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them, his voice was almost serene. "I believe in you too, Hermione. I know if anyone can make something good out of this, you can."

From his chair, Ron was barely able to nod his suddenly very heavy ginger head. "Agreed," he said, as he fell to sleep.


	27. Chapter 27

**AN: The plan is coming! Just not today, lol.**

News that Harry Potter had nearly killed Draco Malfoy in a blood-soaked duel to avenge Ron Weasley's poisoning was completely unsubstantiated, and could not have spread through Hogwarts any quicker.

Nowhere was speculation on the story more lively than in the sixth year classes, where the absence of the three boys involved served as a constant reminder.

"Potter out for blood in defense of Weasley. Dead romantic, isn't it?" Theo Nott sneered over his table of Slytherins during charms class.

"Shut it, Nott," Pansy said, her tone flat, matter-of-fact. "You know he's not with Potter. Weasley is mine."

The rest of the table hooted but Pansy didn't so much as blush. Nott, on the other hand, had turned quite an angry red. "Come on, Pansy. This has gone far enough. You can't really be with Weasley, that beggar of a blood traitor - "

"You watch your mouth, Nott."

Theo leaned across the table toward her. "Right. So if you're with Weasley, tell me how it is that it's Granger who's tending him in the hospital wing right now, while you're in class with me?"

She sneered back at him. "You should know by now, Theodore Nott, that I never go anywhere with you by choice. But you're always tagging along anyway."

As the table hooted again, she was standing up, packing her bag to leave them to move to a different seat - Ron's seat on the empty bench which neither he nor Harry nor Hermione were filling today.

Nott wasn't finished. "Still haven't explained why Granger is in there mopping his brow right now. Did she just now realize how in love she is with him, once he turned up poisoned? Insufferable Gryffindor soulmates thrown back together by tragedy? The end of Weasley's dalliance with the forbidden Slytherin hot girl?"

Pansy slammed her charms book against the tabletop. Honestly, was there anyone in the universe worse at flirting than Nott? The force of her book slamming had the desired effect of startling Nott into shutting up, but it also drew the attention of everyone else in the class. They were all gawking, listening when Pansy said, "As you well know, Ron is not the only boy in the hospital wing who could use Granger's tending today."

Flitwick had had enough and was calling the class back to order, but a ripple of murmuring voices radiated through the class, the long time suspicions all but confirmed: Hermione Granger was absent from class, caring for her darling Draco Malfoy.

When class ended, Pansy bolted from the room without a word to anyone. She ran to Ron, to his bedside, where he lay exhausted after his long, difficult meeting behind Malfoy's curtains. He was sleeping, his expression not peaceful but tense, as if his body was resting while his mind fought on, frantic inside his head.

She sat down hard on the chair beside him. What had she done? She wasn't supposed to let anyone know Granger was with Draco. It would lead to someone blaming Granger for making that charm the Death Eaters found at Malfoy Manor and then - all the terrible things Ron had been working to protect everyone from all year would come rampaging through his defenses, all because of her outburst.

Why had she come to see him? She wasn't a comfort to him. She was trouble and chaos. She knew it, and it was awful, leaving her sniffing and bowing her head onto his bed, crying softly.

Through his light sleep, Ron heard her, and came crawling back into consciousness to find her. "Pansy, love," he croaked. "What is it? What's happened?"

At the sound of his voice, she sat up, wiping her face, moving her head out of range of his hand just as he was about to thread his fingers into her hair. "I ruined everything, Ron. All your fancy plans and schemes - you never should have let me anywhere near them."

He was too worn out to push himself to sitting, to pull her to him, so Ron simply dropped his hand onto her knee. "What happened, Pansy? I haven't told you much of anything yet. How bad can it be?"

She sniffed. "I was in charms class and Theo Nott - " She swore. "All nasty and jealous, he started taunting me, saying, in front of everyone, that Granger was out of class because she was here falling back in love with you - "

"Aw, Pansy, that's rubbish."

"I know, but I hated it anyway," she said. "And then everyone in class heard me when I got mad and hinted that she was here tending Draco, not you. I didn't come right out and say it, but everyone knew what I meant. And now someone's going to rush off to their vile Death Eater parents and tell them the girl who made the charm they're all mad about was Granger, aren't they." She swore again. "I told you I liked you enough not to tell anyone Granger is with Draco. That was true at the time. But now I like you too much to stop myself from telling people they're together."

Her forehead dropped onto the edge of his bed again. "I'm sorry, Ron. Never tell me anything." Her shoulders heaved as she cried into the sheets.

"Come here," Ron said, squeezing her knee. "Come kiss me with your filthy little mouth and let me calm you down."

She stood up, almost bashfully, still blinking through tears, bending to kiss him once, so quickly and lightly that hardly any of her lipstick transferred from her lips to his.

He shook his head. "That's not it. Come lie down then. Talking about this drains the life out of me, and I'm too tired to cast a muffling spell, so you need to come closer or you won't hear me explaining why it's not so bad."

She hesitated.

"Enough, Parkinson. Come here."

She sighed as she eased herself onto the mattress, wriggling into the small space beside him, turned onto her side, head on his shoulder, his arm curved around her, and her arm clamped around his chest to hold herself in place. To neither of their surprise, school sick beds were not made for snuggling.

Ron spoke against her fringe. "You might be more comfortable if you throw your leg over me."

She laughed quietly into his shoulder. "This will do fine."

He settled into her, not too tired to kiss the top of her head. "Suit yourself. Now, listen. This afternoon, Malfoy, Harry, Hermione, and I cleared the air about a lot of things - "

"Don't tell me."

"Hush, Pansy. Listen," he said, "the charm the Death Eaters found isn't some bauble. It's a mark in Draco's flesh, and it's serious. It's an ancient spell from the books of some monks from around the tenth century - some crazy thing Hermione found in the restricted section. Anyways, it's more powerful than either of them knew when she cast it, and it looks like it may be the only chance the Malfoy family has to not get executed by You-know-who at the end of the term."

She jumped against him. "Executed?"

"Yeah, turns out You-know-who still hasn't forgiven them for being the worst Death Eaters ever, and they've got one more chance to redeem themselves before term ends - unless Hermione's charm can protect Draco and his parents, somehow."

Pansy was swearing again.

"So what I'm saying is," Ron went on, "it doesn't matter anymore if You-know-who traces the charm back to Hermione. None of us are allowed to leave the castle until the end of term anyway, and she's safe in here. Don't worry about it. Let your horrible Slytherin mates tattle tale all they want. We're past it now."

She let out a breath, relaxing against him. "Thank the stars."

"Don't mention the charm to anyone, though," Ron added, his voice more urgent. "That part is still secret."

She propped herself up on one elbow, frowning. "But what happens next? How will they find out if the charm can save the Malfoys? And what does that even mean?"

Ron looked at her face, seeing her genuine concern, the sorrow she'd felt at botching the plan turning into a desire to help it along. A pang ran through his heart at not being able to tell her everything, but it was all so dangerous, so delicate. Like so many things, it had to stay between just the three of them - and bloody Malfoy.

He lifted his finger to smooth the frown line between her eyes. "Snape's going to make good with some books Hermione didn't have access to before, and hopefully she can find something in them that gives us a way to use the charm to beat back You-know-who. The tricky part is, some of the monks' most important manuscripts are missing so - we'll just have to wait and see what they come up with."

Pansy's frown deepened. "How can something like a love charm be strong enough to affect the Dark Lord?"

Ron shrugged. "It's complicated and confidential and I don't get it completely myself. But Malfoy and Harry have reasons to reckon that it can make a difference, and we're desperate enough to try. It's all we've got. I mean, Dumbledore is working on a plan of his own, of course, but there's no way it will be ready in time for the Malfoys."

"Dumbledore cares that much about whether the Malfoys live or die?"

Ron sighed. Navigating between what he dared and dared not say to her was more difficult than he'd imagined. But he was sick to death of everyone hiding everything from each other. So far, that had gotten them almost nowhere. "Of course he cares," he said. "But there's more to his concern than just survival. There always is. I'd really better not say any more. Sorry, love."

She pursed her lips. "Well, is there anything I can do to help with the charm? I'm not much for book research, but I'll help however I can."

Ron tightened his arm around her. "That is lovely of you. But there's really nothing anyone else can offer - unless you know a medieval monk from, say, around the tenth century who we could question about all this."

Pansy sat up. "Of course I know one."

Ron was furrowing his brow now. "You do?"

"Yes, we all do."

He shook his head. "What're you on about, Parkinson?"

She batted lightly at his chest. "For one second, Weasley, set your raging Gryffindor aside and think like a Hufflepuff."

"Hufflepuff?" he repeated. Then his eyes grew large. "The Hufflepuff ghost, the Fat Friar - he's a monk."

She was nodding. "Yes, exactly. From the early days of Hogwarts, so he would have been here around the tenth century."

Ron sat up in bed, suddenly strong again, bracing Pansy's face between both his hands, kissing her firmly and squarely on the mouth. He was shouting. "Yes, you brilliant, brilliant girl."

"Well, my mother was in Hufflepuff."

He laughed. "Of course she was."

She hushed him, poking his ribs with her finger. "Don't you dare tell anyone."

He threw his arms around her again, collapsing onto her, knackered but still laughing in relief, and in delight at what he'd discovered in her. "Perfect Pansy," he said. "Leave the books to Hermione and Malfoy. As soon as I'm up, come with me to visit that monk."

* * *

Ginny Weasley spent the morning she was excused from classes to be by her brother's sickbed running around the grounds and through the castle looking for Harry Potter instead. All the while, Harry himself had been either trapped in his agonizing conference with Snape or else in a stupor in the long, hot shower where he'd cleansed himself from the aftermath of the duel. It meant Ginny didn't find Harry until the noon hour, and by then Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had come, making for a boisterous and very welcome show of affection all around Ron's bedside, but offering Ginny no chance to speak privately enough to get Harry to confide in her about what had happened to him that morning, and what might happen next.

She returned to class in the afternoon, Harry had his epic meeting with Malfoy, and Ginny didn't find him again until nearly suppertime.

"Come along, Potter," she said, tossing a quaffle at him in the Entrance Hall as he made his way to the marble staircase after leaving the hospital wing. "Let's go for a fly."

Harry glanced at the castle doors. "Thanks, Ginny," he sputtered. "The trouble is, see, I'm completely knackered. And it must be freezing outside." But even as he said it, he had begun to toss the quaffle lightly from hand to hand.

"That's why I've brought your cloak," she said, draping it over his shoulders. The sweeping, enfolding motion of it felt almost like an embrace. Energy surged into Harry from some deep, dark reserve.

He swallowed, forcing himself to ask, "Will Dean be coming?"

Ginny wrinkled her freckled nose. "No. Wherever Dean Thomas comes or goes, it has nothing to do with me." With both of her hands gripping the edges of Harry's cloak, she tugged him slightly in the direction of the doors, walking backwards, looking into his face. By the time she turned around to lead him outdoors by the cuff of his sleeve, he would have followed her anywhere.

Still so close to mid-winter, it was nearly dark by the time they reached the field house where their brooms were stored. Ginny mounted hers and kicked off the quidditch pitch first, wheeling around to make a test toss of the quaffle. "Can you still see to catch?" she called down to him.

Harry was a seeker with a good sense for moving objects and quick hand-eye coordination, but he barely managed to reach the quaffle in time.

Ginny hummed disapprovingly and flew down to where he stood on the turf, hovering in front of him. "Well, that's not going to work, is it. But I still say you need to blow off some steam, Harry. So hop on."

Harry laughed, a little nervously.

"I'm serious," Ginny said. "It's too dark for us to fly together on separate brooms without losing sight of each other and having an accident. And frankly, Harry, you're not that big and we'll both fit on mine nicely. Set your broom aside and come here."

In the twilight, she couldn't see him blush - or so he hoped.

"Come on, Harry. You've flown tandem before, haven't you?"

"Well, yes but - "

Still hovering, she let go of her broom, sitting up tall, her balance perfect, her hair floating on the cold but gentle wind as she gathered the strands to tie it up. "Don't you trust me? You know there's no one else at this school who flies as well as I do."

It was amazing when she'd talk this way. "I do know that. I'd tell anyone that," he said.

She grinned at him. "Then what are you stood there for?"

He stepped up to her as she landed to let him get on the broom. They tried it with Ginny sitting in the back but, no matter how Harry compared to other boys his age, he was still too big for Ginny to see over to steer.

"Fine, you can sit in the back," she said, "but I'm still the pilot."

"Right," he nodded, straddling the broom and settling his hands on her waist, not quite ready when she kicked off again. Thrown off balance, his polite hold on her waist with his palms and fingertips became a desperate, full-armed snatching.

He made a small cry of protest which trailed into a laugh. "You did that on purpose."

She was laughing too, as she steered them into the deep blue evening sky. "I did. But you're so much more comfortable now, aren't you?"

Harry let himself slump against her back, speaking into her ear. "Yes." He didn't realize until he felt it, that breathing an "s" into her ear would make her shiver between his arms.

"Hey, no speaking Parseltongue to me while I'm flying," she said.

Harry smirked as he answered, "S-s-ure."

"That's it, Harry Potter. You asked for it." She drove the broom to a ridiculous speed - as fast as Harry had ever flown on a broom, if not faster. The darkness around them made it dangerous enough that it should have been terrifying. But Harry felt safer than he had all day. He held her closer, letting his chin sink into her shoulder, his cheek pressed against hers, his heart thudding against her spine.

The loneliness - the sad, solitary feeling he'd had when he walked in on Hermione and Malfoy's embrace that afternoon - it dropped away beneath him. As they flew over the lights of the castle, the Great Hall fully illuminated for supper hour, he saw Ginny's face in the golden glow, and he turned to kiss her cheek.

For the first time in their flight, the course of Ginny's broom wobbled, just a little. She was didn't go much further before she was looping around, losing altitude as she returned them to the field house. Maybe he should have been worried about kissing her, even just on the cheek, without asking permission. But there was no fear in him as their feet touched the ground, and she dropped the broom and turned to face him, his arms still around her waist.

No one was watching. It happened on account of nothing but their feelings for each other. What was most important was that it did happen. Ginny lifted Harry's glasses from his face, closed her eyes, and Harry kissed her again, properly, the way he'd been dying to all year. In contrast to their cold faces, their mouths were warm, irresistibly inviting, making their first kiss long, intense, consuming.

Ginny broke away first, breathless, smiling and staying close. "Better now?" she asked.

Harry hummed, nodding so his nose brushed hers. "So much for this being the worst day of the year for me."

"It was Ron who said," she began, "that Dumbledore told you the source of your power over You-know-who is love. That you have an uncommon, unshakable gift to give love and to get it. And I want to be sure you are always at your most powerful." She kissed him again, her cold hands pressed to his warm neck, slipping into his wind-blown hair.

It might not have been very romantic - maybe not the kind of thing that slinky Malfoy would have said to a girl, but Harry had to say it to Ginny anyway. He held her to him as tightly as he could without hurting her, and told her, "Thank you."

After a moment, she pulled her face out of the crook of his neck, leaned back, and set Harry's glasses on his face. "Now talk to me, Harry. Tell me what happened today. Are you in trouble? Did you cry? Was it the tiniest bit exhilarating? Tell me however you like, without worrying what I'll have to say about it."

And he did. They returned their brooms to the fieldhouse, lit a fire in its small stove, and sat on a bench warming each other's hands as he told her everything about the fight with Malfoy in the bathroom. She didn't try to make him feel bad about jeopardizing the rest of the quidditch season, and she even defended his decisions when he hadn't dared defend them himself.

"Malfoy cast the first hex?" she raved. "Well no wonder you panicked. Especially since the last time the two of you fought he broke your nose while you were defenseless. Of course you reacted as violently as you did. Who wouldn't? And with the echoing acoustics in that bathroom, there's no way you would have been able to hear what he was cursing you with. He could have been casting anything - even an unforgivable. No, Harry, I'm glad you had something good up your sleeve."

"Well, I don't know that I'd call sectumsempra 'good' - "

"Fine, then. Something effective," she conceded. "I'm just - so glad you're okay." She cradled his face with her hand, trying to look into his eyes but seeing nothing but the firelight reflecting in his lenses. Harry was glad for it, secretly afraid that she was there with him, holding his hands and comforting him thanks to the effect of some spell, and if she truly saw him, that spell might break.

The fire burned out and they walked back to the castle, to the kitchen to find something to eat before the elves retired for the night.

Afterward, at the bottom of the marble staircase, Ginny turned when Harry didn't follow her up.

He gestured toward the hospital corridor. "You go on. I'm heading over to check on Ron one more time before I go to bed. The lads in our room will be wanting to know the latest on how he's getting on."

"Right," she said. "Oh, but Harry, maybe - maybe don't tell Ron - about - what we - you know…"

Harry's heart sank. No, of course it had to be like this. How could he have stupid enough to mistake this one perfect night with Ginny as something he could ever repeat? This had been a one-off - a show of concern and mercy from an old friend, a special benefit at the end of day so terrible it was hardly to be believed. And now that he was laughing and himself again, her job was done, and it was all over.

"He's been through a lot today, and I'm not sure how he'll take the news, so…" she let the words drift away.

Harry could only nod at his feet.

"So I'll explain it all to him in the morning," Ginny finished.

He had to be sure what she meant. "Explain - how? What?"

From the step above him, she linked her arms around his neck and let herself fall into his arms, forcing him to hold her weight. She kissed him sweetly on the mouth. "Explain to him that I'm your girlfriend from now on, that's what."

Harry pressed his face into her neck, breaking into an almost giddy laugh against her skin. He held her tightly and spun the both of them around in a circle at the foot of the stairs.

* * *

"Miss Granger, until you are formally made Madam Malfoy, you may not sleep the night in the same bed and Mr. Malfoy."

Hermione jerked awake, nearly throwing herself out of Draco's hospital bed when Madam Pomfrey came in to give him his final painkilling draught of the night. As the evening had worn on and the castle grew cooler, he had persuaded her to join him under the covers, and they were sleeping fully entwined by the time Madam Pomfrey arrived at nine o'clock.

Hermione stumbled out of the bed and onto the floor, blushing and apologizing, yet strangely gratified by the sound of the words "Madam Malfoy."

Still groggy, Draco drank the draught, and groaned as he felt after Hermione and discovered the emptiness of his hospital bed.

"Oh, you'll live without her for a few hours, Mr. Malfoy," Madam Pomfrey said as she pushed through the curtains, bustling off to send Pansy and Harry away so Ron could sleep.

When she was gone, Hermione straightened her clothes, smoothed her hair, and stooped to kiss Draco's cheek. It was hard to believe this was the same face that had been slashed open earlier in the day. His chest was still ghastly to look at, but his face was nearly recovered. She whispered goodnight against his ear.

"You'll be back in the morning?" he said.

"Eventually, yes. I'm going to get up early and get to work in Snape's study, on the research."

Draco sighed. "Yes, I suppose you must. I'll be leaving here tomorrow, no matter how I'm feeling. All they're doing for me here is letting me sleep, and I can do that just as well in the dungeons. But Hermione," he said, snagging her hand as she turned to leave, "after today, it's got to be obvious to the whole school that we're a couple. And that means - "

"You-know-who will know who made the charm. Yes, I'd thought of it too." She hung her head.

He pressed her hand to his lips. "It's alright now. We should be safe in the school, but be careful. Stay close to Potter and the Weasleys. Let them help."

She squeezed his hand between both of hers. "Yes. Same to you."


	28. Chapter 28

Early in the morning, in the dimness of the grey early light, Hermione stole through deserted corridors, descending from Gryffindor tower to the dungeons to knock at the door of Professor Snape's study. He opened at once, not at all sleepy, fully dressed in his black robes, as if he had slept completely clothed in them, perhaps while hanging from the dungeon rafters, upside down, like a huge bat.

Without a word, he led her inside, motioning to the small table reserved for students carrying out inane, tedious acts of punishment during detentions. She hopped into the miserable little desk as if it was an amusement park ride, her posture straight and eager, almost vibrating.

A habitual teacherly sadism kept Snape moving slowly as she waited, stretching toward the highest shelf behind his desk, unlocking a glass cabinet housing his special collection of forbidden books on corporeal magic.

"You read runes, I trust?"

"Yes, sir."

He hummed dubiously and tossed a copy of his own personal key to runes from the books' time period onto the top of the stack he set on her table.

Awed, reverent, she opened the cover of the largest of the forbidden books, skimming its opening pages. "It's very much like the one in the library," she said, flipping through the familiar chapters, "Only - yes!" she nearly squealed. "It's written without the cyphers. It's in plain language, like a cookbook. At last!"

"That's all very well, Miss Granger," Snape clipped, from where he now sat behind his desk. "But I regret I am not available to field your line-by-line commentary on your studies. Make notes of your observations, organize them into a readable format, and I will look at them when you've finished."

"Oh," she said. "Of course. Sorry, sir."

She glanced at the door, wishing Draco would appear to listen to everything she found, reflecting her excitement and fascination with his own. She sighed, dipped her quill, and scratched away at her notes.

A few things came to light rather quickly. Compared to original, unmodified Mitrian love charms, the one she'd cast on Draco in the hospital wing at the end of fifth year was stronger than usual because she had used Crookshanks, a half-magical creature, instead of a standard dove as the animal familiar. That, she already knew.

But at the same time, her version of the charm was weaker because she hadn't done it on the optimal date, with the best possible stars in the best possible motions and positions overhead. She'd need to consult a star map if she wanted to strengthen that aspect of their charm, and that was a task well-suited to Draco, once he was up for it.

The placement of the charm on Draco's body could have been stronger too. The monks advised inscribing the charm over the heart, but since the left forearm was of particular interest to Voldemort, perhaps it was for the best that she'd put it there.

Finally, she had cast her spell without any verbal incantation, let alone the one the monks had composed. She had written it using her wand as a stylus without speaking anything aloud. For best results, the monks called for the caster to do both.

It might be possible to add all of these things to the charm Draco already had. And if they did, it might heal the lines and figures that had been broken to fragments when the Dark Mark was branded over them. The fine tuning of these missing elements might bring the charm back to a more perfect form. But would a restoration like that make the charm strong enough to sever their unwanted connection to Voldemort, or would it make their attachment to him stronger, more dangerous, fatal?

She sat puzzling over it, her eyes fixed on sunlight dawning in the long, flat window high on the wall opposite her desk.

"The smaller volume," Snape intoned from his desk without looking at her. "The one with the shredded binding."

Hermione set aside the large book to look at the crumbling, water-stained, torn volume Snape recommended. It seemed older than the others, its runes more arcane. Even with the help of Snape's key, reading it was slow going. She battled through it for several pages, finding nothing she did not already know, growing anxious as the clock ticked closer to the beginning of the school day, when Snape would leave, and she would have to go too.

"That will do for this morning, Miss Granger," he said, almost as soon as she'd thought it herself. "Report back here after classes to resume your studies."

She skipped back up the stairs, heading not toward the smell of hot breakfast coming from the Great Hall, but toward the hospital wing, looking for Draco, to tell him what she'd read.

Pansy was already in the hospital wing when Hermione arrived, sitting at the foot of Ron's bed. He would not be discharged today, though he was looking much better than when Hermione had last seen him, sitting up in bed, tucking into a bowl of porridge.

Ron was waving her over. "Hermione, Pansy's thought of something brilliant - "

"Sorry, Ron. I'm in a hurry to catch Draco. Has he left yet?"

"No, not quite yet," Pansy answered for Ron, annoyed at Hermione's disregard for him. Her smile was stiff, her eyes slightly narrowed. "Better hurry in there."

What Pansy hadn't told Hermione was that she had just brought Draco a fresh uniform from their dormitory and, behind the curtains, he was likely to be midway through changing his clothes. Sure enough. Hermione walked in and her cheery hello morphed into a stifled shriek.

Draco yelled back at her. He was standing beside the bed in his trousers, belt undone and shirtless, his Dark Mark plainly visible. When he saw it was her, he swore in relief. "Granger, what are you doing, coming in here screaming?"

"Sorry."

He dropped the shirt he'd snatched up to cover himself. "Look at you, acting shy, as if you didn't spend all day yesterday cuddled up against my bare chest."

"I'm sorry." She laughed at herself. "I didn't expect - "

"You didn't?" He was walking toward her, buckling his belt but still only half dressed. "When you come into someone's room in the morning, at the prime time for them to be getting dressed for the day - "

"Yes, yes, I don't know what I was thinking. I suppose I was just excited to tell you about my research with Snape."

"Excited about her research," he repeated in a slow, rumbling voice. He had come close enough to touch her.

"Yes, I found out…" her voice trailed off as he stepped into her space, distracted first by his healing chest wound and then by the rest of him. "Draco? Malfoy, you haven't - finished - dressing."

He ran one finger down the length of her crisp white sleeve. "Before you tell me about the books, would it be alright if I wished you good morning first?"

She smiled, her cheeks flushed, raising her hands, her fingertips pressed against his stomach. His skin was cool and taut. "I thought you said you weren't in the shirts-off set."

"I'm not," he said, walking into her hands. "That's why I'd rather not waste a rare moment like this."

He folded his bare arms around her, his skin sliding over her hair where it fell down along her back. He pressed her into his chest, and she moved the smooth, softness of her face against him, first one cheek, and then the other. Her hands returned his embrace on the surface of his back, her palms moving over the angles of his shoulder blades, to the nape of his neck, trailing down to his waist.

He hummed and swayed. "Such a small thing," he said, his breath in her ear, "but not for us."

She kissed him over his heart, leaving her lips against him long enough to sense his heart beating, still relieved beyond expression that he had survived these harrowing past six months. If his charm had been applied exactly according to the monks' directions, in this spot, it would have glowed between them at this moment.

Suddenly possessive, she breathed deeply, greedily filling her head with his smell, filling the hollows of her palms with his warm, living skin. Unbidden, her eyes closed, as if it was dazzling, how much she adored him. This was what really made the charm work - not the stars or incantations but this feeling, this closeness.

He had to be safe. She had to save him.

There were footsteps outside the curtain as Madam Pomfrey set about her morning rounds. She was dealing with Ron first, giving Hermione time to drag herself away.

"Get your shirt before someone sees - it," she said, grazing his mark with her finger.

He groaned a complaint, but she was right. It wouldn't do for him to be seen for what he was supposed to be.

She turned her back, as if modesty was something he cared about between them. "We need to get going anyway. Breakfast will be ending soon and you're in no position to give it a miss." She turned around to find him buttoned into his shirt, tugging on the ends of his tie. She said, "Look at how lean you're getting. What would your mother say?"

Draco stood beside his hospital bed, his hands frozen part way through his Windsor knot. What would his mother say if she saw him for the first time since their last ghastly meeting in the manor? Was her life any less of a nightmare than it had been the night she returned from Azkaban to find the Dark Lord interrogating her son? Had he and Hermione made things worse for her yesterday, when they activated the charm to show Potter and Weasley?

Madam Pomfrey threw the curtains wide open. "Well, Mr. Malfoy, I'd like to have you stay a bit longer, but Professor Snape says you can go. So that's that. Report back here in the evening to let me have another look at that chest wound. Otherwise, you can take your Miss Granger and be on your way."

With the curtain flung open, Hermione's eyes began to dart around the room. "I'll go down first," she said, about to leave him there re-tying his tie.

Draco called her back. "Why? What's the point in hiding us now?"

She stopped mid-turn. "Because we don't - " she began to say. But they'd agreed the night before that there was nothing to be gained by continuing to act like they weren't together, especially now that everyone knew.

"This is a new phase in our relationship," he said, tucking the end of his tie into his jumper. "I'd say we've mastered forbidden love. Now we take on the challenge of normal love. Which means you wait for me, take my hand, and we go down to breakfast together."

She lifted her chin. "Alright. I'll wait for you, Malfoy."

"Thank you, Granger." And with that, he joined their hands.

She called out a goodbye to Ron as they left, waving at him with her hand still held in Draco's. "We're dashing off to catch the end of breakfast. Malfoy's return to good health depends on it."

Draco rolled his eyes and muttered a weak protest but followed after her anyway.

Ron responded with a genuine but uneasy smile. "Are you then? Best of luck to you both, I guess," he said, shouting the rest as they disappeared out the door. "And come right back here at noon, Hermione. I've still got something important to tell you."

* * *

If Professor Snape had still been teaching Advanced Potions, Hermione, Draco, and Harry would have noticed and worried when he did not appear in class that morning. As it was, they were on their way to brewing obliviously away with Slughorn when Snape clutched at his arm in the corridor outside his Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

The Dark Lord was calling.

At a pace just under a run, he moved through the castle, against the flow of students parting to get out of his way as they headed to their classes. He was soon out the doors, where cold fresh air set back the heat in his arm for just an instant, and he was running over the grounds, toward the gates where a pair of Aurors stood guard.

"You," he hissed to them, "find the headmaster at once, and tell him I have been called on an urgent errand."

With a spin and squeezing tug, Snape was on the gravel drive outside Malfoy Manor. He breathed deeply, shook out the last of the pain and tension in his arm, found a scrap of parchment in his robes and, since the Fidelius spell prevented him from speaking it aloud, wrote Hermione Granger's name on it.

Before advancing any closer to the house, Snape closed his eyes to raise his occulmens barrier. It was not a wall of noise and chaos, after the method Bellatrix taught Draco, but a smooth, hard face with enough false avenues and dead ends - unsettling moments from his youth, embarrassing and unpleasant but not important - which made the landscape of his mind appear natural, as if there was no occulmency at work at all.

It was Narcissa herself who let him inside, skulking around the entrance in the grand hall, as was her habit now. Snape hadn't been to the manor since before the school term had resumed, meaning Narcissa was completely unmedicated by his calming draughts. Her resemblance to Bellatrix was growing the longer she was kept here with her. Narcissa's immaculate grooming had lapsed, leaving her with a wild look, her eyes circled with heavy darkness, exhausted but restless.

"Severus you've come. Thank the stars for you." She had taken his hand when he stepped inside, and as she spoke to him, she clawed upward, climbing his arm like a thick rope, taking him by the shoulders and holding his face between her hands. "He had a terrible fit last night. Tearing the dressing from his wand hand, overtaken by an awful blue light, and cursing - " her voice broke into a sob ''cursing my boy, my Draco."

Snape pulled her hands away from him, folding them and pressing them against her sternum. "If you truly care for your son, Madam, do not delay me any further."

"Severus, please…" she called after him.

He slammed the drawing room door on her cries. The Dark Lord sat in his chair by the hearth, his wounded hand unwrapped, the bandages still strewn over the floor, the flesh of his hand withered almost to bone, marred by scars like white scratches on pale jade.

Snape bowed, his hand extending the parchment with Hermione's name written on it. "My Lord I have news, the identity of the girl - "

"Has been known to me since yesterday, thanks to the reports of several of my other servants." The Dark Lord batted the parchment away, sending it falling to the floor with the old bandages. "How are you so late in coming, Severus? Why did I have to resort to summoning you? You - my most excellent of servants, beaten to a vital revelation by the likes of Goyle and his gossiping missus."

Bellatrix fell through the doorway, pouncing on Snape in this moment of reprisal. "Hiding her! He was hiding Harry Potter's mudblood to the very end! This is what he is, my Lord - not just double-minded but sentimental, soft hearted, weak and useless."

She pranced around the room, singing in a high mocking voice, "Such a good teacher, such a good teacher."

Snape ignored her. "My Lord, surely your connection to Potter revealed to you the events that have unfolded in Hogwarts during the past day."

The Dark Lord flicked a warning hex Bellatrix's way, crashing into the wall beside her, ending her capering. "I did indeed see Potter's mind - his attack, his adept handling of some Dark magic indeed. Unforeseen but not unwelcome. At the very least, Young Master Malfoy has a talent for inspiring fruitful rage." His voice rose to a shriek at the last word, his fascination with Potter degrading into his anger with Malfoy. "The boy's petty rivalry with Potter risks exposing his assignment. It must stop."

Snape bowed again. "Truly, my Lord." He raised his head, glaring at Bellatrix as she smirked at his groveling. "I am sure Madam Lestrange has informed you of the event that precipitated Potter's attack on young Malfoy, culpable as she is for it."

Her smirk twisted into a mask of rage. "What lie is this?"

"It was the Black sisters, my Lord, along with the same accomplice who instigated the debacle with the cursed necklace last term, who sent a bottle of poisoned mead to Hogwarts."

"Lies!"

"It was bound for the headmaster but was waylaid by a greedy professor, coming into the hands of Ronald Weasley instead. Potter instantly and easily made the connection between his friend's poisoning and the Black family, clumsy and obvious as it was. Naturally, he was seized with his signature sense of righteous indignation - and the rest you know."

Bellatrix screeched an objection. "Lies! It's all lies, my Lord! I would never undertake something so foolish."

"Oh no, you are the very model of wisdom and restraint," Snape sneered.

The Dark Lord cut off Bellatrix's rising voice with his own. "Yes, I see. It was the Weasley boy's poisoning which led to this. It was all there in Potter's mind. He was indeed blaming this ridiculous family for the mead coming into the school when he attacked. I remember. I remember as if it had been in my own mind."

Snape nodded. "Yes, and in the delicate aftermath of the poisoning and its revenge, while idle gawkers were free to run about bearing tales, I was occupied restoring order and raising sympathy for Draco, heading off an investigation that would have led the school's resident Aurors right here, and ended any hope of infiltrating the school through the vanishing cabinet."

Bellatrix was wailing. "My Lord the house of Black did not send this poison - "

"Ask your sister," Snape snarled over her protests. "It is no secret that Narcissa Black Malfoy has become fearful for her son to the point of being prone to the rashest misbehaviour. And her sister, though she boasts of loyalty and power, offers only empty talk and has, in fact, done nothing to stop her."

"Then we will stop her. Lock her in the cellar," the Dark Lord commanded.

"It won't hold her," Bellatrix replied, her voice close to sobbing. "Her dirty haunted house would never hold her there."

"In that case, I leave it to you, Bellatrix," the Dark Lord said. "Control your sister or be punished with her."

She turned on Snape, snarling. "You have done this. I would be a formidable soldier for the Dark Lord but you have undermined me and made me a nursemaid to my mad sister."

"No assignment made in the service of the Dark Lord is unworthy - "

"Silence, both of you," the Dark Lord said. "Enough, Bellatrix. See to your sister."

She left, muttering curses at Snape, crashes sounding through the halls as she retreated.

The Dark Lord beckoned Snape to his side. He knelt on the floor, examining the wounded hand. "Severus, with the caster of the charm revealed, I want the girl brought here. Tend to my hand and fetch the Granger girl at once."

Snape inspected the array of balms and vials on the table beside the armchair, opening, sniffing, mixing. "My Lord, at the time her identity became known, the headmaster took especial interest in her safety. I cannot remove her from the castle without alarm, and perhaps not without a confrontation with the headmaster himself. If that is what my Lord wishes - "

The Dark Lord swore. "No, not yet. Where once her anonymity protected her, now it is her infamy that protects her."

Snape nodded. "Indeed. The girl is heralded as clever but her gifts, like Potter's, lie much more in luck than in skill."

"Maddening," the Dark Lord said. "But not insurmountable."

They passed a moment in silence as Snape dressed and rewrapped the damaged hand. The flesh above the wrist was now beginning to shrink and twist, but he said nothing of it.

"The charm was activated yesterday, Severus."

Snape nodded. "The audacity," he said. And he meant it. Granger must have been showing it off for Potter, the arrogant, stubborn boy who wouldn't listen to her without tangible proof. It might be for the best. Snape still couldn't be sure. All he said was, "A sentimental gesture to soothe a young girl's feelings after young Malfoy's near death experience, no doubt. Typical but foolhardy. Regrettable."

His hand wrapped, the Dark Lord folded it against his chest. "I have seen for myself that Malfoy bears no ill effects when the charm is activated. I must learn whether any harm comes to the girl when I activate it myself."

Snape stiffened. "Shall I attempt to ingratiate myself to her, my Lord? Come to her in my role as a concerned teacher and gain her confidence, learn her secrets?"

The Dark Lord hummed. "Yes, we shall pursue that for now. Convince her she will suffer from this charm, guide her in learning how to lift it, so it vexes me no more. We shall proceed in this way, until young Malfoy gets us inside the castle. And then she will be first to die. See to it that young Malfoy is a witness when she does. He has not bargained with me in good faith and has earned my bad faith in return. As we agreed, I will spare his mother and father, but not his lover."

"Of course not, my Lord."

"Yes, Severus, you take it up with the girl. And I," the Dark Lord said, taking his wand in his left hand, "I shall deal with the boy."


	29. Chapter 29

Breakfast in Hogwarts's Great Hall the day after Ron Weasley was poisoned and Harry Potter was somehow not expelled for almost killing Draco Malfoy, was a bit tense.

The hall fell quiet when Harry first stepped inside, but he was growing accustomed to that kind of attention and simply sat at the Gryffindor table, almost as usual, but without Ron and Hermione for companions. Many of the eyes in the room were still watching as he took a seat by Ginny Weasley instead. As he did so, he looked too happy. His normalcy was unnerving, sitting beside Dean Thomas's brand new ex-girlfriend, nothing in his manner betraying any remorse for yesterday's attack.

As for Draco, he still hadn't made an appearance. Pansy Parkinson had returned from the hospital wing the night before to report to the entire Slytherin common room that Draco was recovering well and should be released in the morning. But there was still no word about how the Homicidal One would be punished, and all of Slytherin house would be glaring at him across the dining tables, smarting from the injustice of it all, until they were certain something would be done.

Harry would find out soon. Professor McGongall had ordered him to report to her office right after potions class, during his first free period of the day. Though he dreaded it, Harry found the impending meeting wasn't able to ruin his ridiculously good mood. Ginny was sitting next to him, close enough that her knee touched his leg under the table.

"Right," she said, rather suddenly, standing up without giving Harry a chance to let go of the hand he'd been surreptitiously holding. "I'm off to the hospital wing to have a chat with Ron before class."

"Shall I come along?" he asked, sputtering slightly.

She shook her head. "No, consider it a family meeting. And at a time like this, Harry, it's best if we emphasize to everyone that you and I are not actually related, no matter what Mum says."

He nodded, bowing his head. But then Ginny's hands were braced to both his cheeks, turning his face up and stamping a full, wet kiss on his mouth in sight of everyone.

"There," Ginny said as she dropped her hands away. "Now there's no turning back. I have to rush off to the hospital and explain it all to Ron before the rumors beat me to it. Cheers, Harry!"

She hopped over the back of the bench and bolted out of the room, leaving Harry sitting alone in a wave of new, scandalized chatter. Across the table, Neville was gawking at him. With a pained look, Seamus was eyeing Dean. And Dean was pushing aside his plate and standing to leave.

Harry cast his eyes around, looking for someone safe. His heart gave a great leap of relief when he saw Hermione stepping through the doors, but it sank again when he saw that she had come hand-in-hand with Malfoy. The pair of them stopped after clearing the threshold, each of them looking in opposite directions, toward the house tables where they usually sat. They looked back at each other. Hermione shrugged up at Draco and he bent to whisper in her ear. He might have kissed her - it was impossible to tell with his face buried in her hair.

Maybe fewer people would have noticed them if a loud swear hadn't rung out from Cormac McLaggen's direction. Professor McGonagall looked up from her porridge to glare out at the unidentified profaner. Harry still squirmed at the sight of them himself, and he was quite pleased when they separated and went to sit in their typical spots.

At the Slytherin table, the healing wound on Draco's face was being examined by his housemates, many of them throwing angry glares at Harry and perplexed ones at Hermione.

"Harry!" she greeted him, falling into Ginny's vacant seat. She couldn't help noticing Neville's stunned expression, and wished him a good morning as well.

For a moment Neville said nothing before shaking his head and managing. "Harry and Ginny. Hermione and Malfoy? Why is it never me?"

Seamus patted him hard on the back. "You're better off, buck."

"Harry," Hermione began again, "I started studying with Snape this morning and - "

"Yeah, where is he?" Harry interrupted, gesturing at the teachers' dais. "Breakfast is almost over and his place setting hasn't been used."

She rolled her eyes. "He's fine, Harry. I've seen him already this morning. And he's asked me to come back to his study right after class to pick it up where I left off. I'm making good progress. I feel - hopeful, for the first time in weeks. So don't dash it with your paranoia."

No matter what she said, Harry's uneasiness would not abate, and he stayed until the very end of breakfast to see if Snape would arrive. That was partly why, at any rate. Staying also gave him an excuse not to walk to potions with Hermione and Malfoy. They'd be stared at quite enough without having Harry, Malfoy's alleged attempted murderer, tagging along awkwardly but amicably by their side.

In class, Hermione didn't bring Draco to sit with them at their bench in potions. In truth, the pair of them were expert in ignoring each other, which was rather nice for Harry, especially with Ron absent. Class was more difficult for him than usual, since he hadn't dared bring the Half-blood Prince's book along so soon after the - incident.

At the meeting with McGonagall, she was as incensed as someone so proper and formal could be. She expressed her personal disappointment, which was more unpleasant than it might sound, and then she informed Harry that his quidditch season was over for the year. Moreover, he was no longer the team captain, which was a terrible blow.

Ginny met him outside of McGonagall's office, on her way to fifth year potions.

"What? No more quidditch? Stripped of the captain's robes? And all for defending yourself against a school bully with a history of violence against you? That is right out of order, Harry. I can hardly believe it! I'll have Mum write a letter of protest." She shouted out all the feelings he was too humble to express, defending him against the justice meted out to him, even though he rather knew he deserved much of it.

Harry looked both ways down the corridor before hugging Ginny tightly, too grateful to keep from touching her. "No, no protest letters," he said. "Just leave it. At least without the snitch to worry about, I'll have a better view of you during matches. It's a good trade."

He almost meant it.

"Bollocks," she said, nuzzling her cheek against his. "Ack, Harry. Get Dad to teach you how to shave properly, would you? You've got to take better care of yourself."

He laughed quietly into her ear. "Right. Will do, Gin."

"Alright, alright," she said, pushing away from him. "Off to class, you, before there's any more trouble. And don't forget to go see Ron at noon. He's taking our news as well as he can. And in his weakened state, you'd be safe enough even if he wasn't. Oh, and be sure to bring Hermione with you. Ron is absolutely frantic to speak to her."

"Is he?"

"Yes, some rubbish about how brilliant Pansy Parkinson is. Who knows what he's on about? Just bring Hermione or you might end up talking about us the whole time, and that might get - odd."

She kissed him quickly and trotted off to the potions lab, leaving Harry standing, as if enchanted, watching her leave.

* * *

Hermione stepped out of her ancient runes classroom, her nose still in her textbook, puzzling over the blank spaces where modern prepositions ought to be. She didn't see Draco waiting for her in the window across the corridor.

"Granger," he called.

She jumped, blushed, and then remembered their new arrangement.

He hopped out of the window, sauntering toward her, smirking and looking her over. He clamped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side in spite of her stiffness. "How was runes?"

She lifted her chin, the contours of her body moulding into his, heat rising between them even as she tried to remain prim. "Fascinating."

"And lonely?" he probed, his lips too near her ear, setting her quivering beneath his arm. "Tell me it was lonely. And you couldn't wait to see me and throw your arms around me no matter who was watching. And it will be all you can do to keep yourself from spending Defense Against the Dark Arts class sitting in my lap."

She scoffed. "Yes, right in front of Snape."

"The professor helping you craft a charm to marry us? Yes, why not?"

She pressed her hand over his mouth to shush him. "Honestly, Draco. Can't you just be content with not having to act like we hate each other in public anymore?"

He pulled her hand off his mouth and bobbed forward to peck a kiss on her forehead before taking her hand and leading her toward Snape's class. "No need to be self-conscious, Granger. No one cares about us today. We're already old news, now that Potter has come out as dating Ginny Weasley."

Hermione stopped. "He what?"

Draco tugged her along. "Yeah, right before we came down to breakfast, apparently. Missy Weasley kissed Potter at the Gryffindor table, bold as you please."

She blinked. "Well, that explains Neville. Can't say I didn't see it coming myself. But still..."

"Right. So what I'm saying," Draco continued, still smirking, "is that if we want to make a scandal out of ourselves on the same day Potter's love-life goes public, we're going to have to up our game."

He turned to face her, bending toward her mouth this time.

She folded her arms and took her wide, battle stance, tossing her head. "Malfoy, don't you dare snog me in the middle of this crowded corridor as part of some pissing match between you and Harry Potter."

He laughed and took her hand again. "Sorry, no of course I shouldn't. It's just - the timing is so Potter of him. Isn't it? Come on, let's go to class. I promise you can sit in your own chair."

She let go of his hand but linked her arm through his. "You are too kind."

But just when she'd thought she'd convinced him not to make a show of them, Draco dragged her into a niche behind a statue.

"Malfoy! Will you stop - "

"No, Hermione, it's not that," he said.

She looked at his face. It was suddenly pallid and slicked with sweat. "What's the matter? Is it your wounds? Do you need Madam Pomfrey?"

"No - "

"Snape?"

"No," he said, his breathing laboured, eyes closed. "I need to leave. It's - my arm." He opened his eyes, terrified. "It's him."

She gasped. "Don't go. He'll hurt you. And you're still too weak - "

"I have to go. It's already torture." He clutched his arm. "I can't stand it. Get me outside."

She tried to support him, walking out of the niche and toward the main doors, but he was heavy and tall, falling on her. "Harry!" she called out as she saw him passing on his way to the classroom. "Draco is being called - home. Right now. Please, Harry. Help me get him outside the school gates."

Harry's face was icing over, hard and cold. He looked Draco over from his head to his feet, returning to the centre - to his arm. He shook his head. "Sorry," Harry said. "I can't help with this one."

Draco was groaning into Hermione's ear, getting sick and frantic, beginning to claw at the cloth of his sleeve. "Draco, no," she whispered into his ear. "Don't uncover it here."

She swept her eyes up and down the corridor, desperate. And then she saw them. "Goyle!" she called. "Crabbe and Goyle - please!"

They bundled Draco off, one of the few things they knew exactly how to do. Hermione stood in the currents of her classmates, watching the three tall heads make their way outside, into the grasp of the monster waiting to take Draco away.

* * *

Before the Aurors keeping watch at the gates could stop them, Crabbe and Goyle tossed Draco outside the school grounds, into the pull of Dark Lord.

He was gone.

An instant later, he was stumbling, sliding on the frosty, yellowed lawn outside the manor. The pain in his arm had almost ebbed completely away by the time he was letting himself inside the main doors.

A small, sweet voice exclaimed wordlessly at the sight of him.

He answered. "Mother?"

"Draco!" She appeared from behind the piano, where she had been sitting on the bench. She looked very little like herself, wearing the same dress he'd seen her in during the holidays, her hair a dense thicket, like Aunt Bella's, only white as Bella's was black. Her eyes were wild and shadowy, as if she hardly slept anymore. When her arms closed around him, Draco was struck by their thinness, their frailness, as if she was a tiny white bird caught inside this great, grand house.

She held him, ranting manically. "You've come back, my darling. Come back to serve him and serve him so perfectly. Serve him in your father's place. A high place. A trusted place. Serve him well, Draco - "

"Cissie!" Aunt Bella was shouting from the top of the stairs. "Cissie, who have you let inside now? What are you telling them?"

Draco turned his face up to her. "It's me, Aunt Bella."

"Draco," she drawled. "Has he called you?"

"Yes. I came as soon as I could."

"Of course you did, darling. Of course you did," she said, landing at the bottom of the staircase. "Your mother isn't well, Draco. She sent the mead to the school, you know. It had nothing to do with me. You'll tell him that if he asks, won't you? Yes, she's a terrible handful for me. But I do what I can to take good care of her."

"So I see," he sneered. "Take a rest, Aunt Bella. If Mother needs minding, I'll do it myself until the Dark Lord sends someone for me."

She patted his cheek, lightly and matronly at first, then spreading her finger and dragging them greedily upward, into his hair. "Ah, Draco. You are your father's lovely, lovely son," she crooned. "Thank you." She skipped back up the stairs, cackling merrily to herself over her momentary freedom.

"Sit down, Mother." He led Narcissa to the nearest chair, her piano bench.

"Did you want to hear a song, Draco?" she asked.

It was the first thing she'd said to him that wasn't spoken in a deranged wail. Connected to the piano, she sounded almost like herself again. "Yes, Mother, if you please. That would be wonderful."

She flexed her hands over the keys. "For you, darling, a simple Mozart: Rondo alla Turca." She began to play. "You remember this one, don't you? Jaunty little piece. It was your favourite. I remember you, marching all around - your pirouettes."

He smiled. "Yes, I remember too." He spoke out loud, to the house. "Hairbrush." His mother's silver hairbrush appeared on the top of the piano. Draco began to separate her matted hair into sections, brushing each tenderly as she played, restoring her hair to its silky, lustrous shine.

She was coming to the end of the piece. "It's a good song, but too easy. A little boy's song, isn't it, Draco. It doesn't suit us anymore. How about something more like," the song changed, it's tone and tempo a frantic sadness. "Something like the Allegretto from the Tempest? Beethoven!"

She played and played as Draco smoothed her hair with the brush. Down the corridor, the door to the drawing room was still closed. The Dark Lord had summoned him to the house, but not yet into the room. With his eyes, Draco watched for Wormtail. With his fingers, he brushed his mother's hair. And with his soul, he listened to her play.

She finished her Beethoven, clapped her hands, and said, "What's next, Draco? Not Liszt. No Liszt. That's Bella's favourite, and it's madness."

He smiled, cheered to see she could still sense madness outside herself. "How about Rachmaninoff?" he said, laying the brush down, smoothing her hair one last time with the palms of his hands. She was still tired and wild, but now she also looked cherished and loved.

At Rachmaninoff's name, she frowned, as he knew she would. "I don't know that one."

"No, he's a Muggle composer, and not long dead," Draco said. "But listen to him." He sat beside her and began to play. "This is one of his famous preludes."

"It's all chords," she said after a moment, letting her head rest against his shoulder. "And slow. Brutal."

"Yes, but listen," Draco insisted. "Wait."

He began to pick up speed and complexity, travelling over the keyboard. She lifted her head. "Where did you learn this?" she called over the long, loud tones.

"In London, during the holidays. Someone left the sheet music at the house where I stayed."

"It's," she began, "it's astounding, in its way."

"Yes," he said. "It is."

But then the music cut off quickly, its tension unresolved, when Wormtail crept close enough to pinch Draco's sleeve between his fingers. "Come, Master Malfoy. The Dark Lord is waiting."

He stood up, his mother's arms clasped around his waist. "Draco, come back. When he's finished with you, come back to me."

"I shall try, Mother," he said, with the odd formality that passed for reverent affection between them.

He was stepping away from the piano, out of Narcissa's hold, as the elves opened the front doors to a small group of newcomers. They were his father's old associates - Death Eaters assembling here for a meeting, nodding to him as they passed from the grand entrance hall into the dining room.

Coming from the opposite side of the hall, out of the drawing room, was Professor Snape. With a glance, he took Draco in before he strode through the hall to join the rest of them in the dining room. He pressed a parchment into Draco's hand as he passed.

The Death Eater meeting would wait until after the Dark Lord had dealt with the youngest of his ranks. Draco followed Wormtail to the drawing room.

"Draco," the Dark Lord sang out as he came in. "You've come. After the ghastly incident with Potter yesterday we simply had to see you for ourselves, to see how you were getting on." He tutted. "Beastly Potter has marred your face, that supernally beautiful face."

Draco fingered his wound but said nothing as the Dark Lord rose from his chair, wand in hand.

"And the other wound, it is on your chest?"

He nodded, disgusted but not surprised as his jumper and shirt vanished away, and he was left standing in the cold of the drawing room, half naked.

The Dark Lord hissed at the sight of the wound on his chest, still jagged and red. "Dark, dark magic," he said. "How close you must have been to death. But now you are well?"

Draco nodded. "I am in Professor Snape's excellent care."

"As am I," the Dark Lord said, lifting his bandaged arm. "You will remember my affliction, no doubt."

Draco nodded again. "Yes, my Lord."

"If I recall correctly," he said, taking Draco by his bare wrist, "when I work the ruined remnants of Hermione Granger's love charm with my wand," he paused to watch Draco cringe at the sound of him speaking her name, "you are unharmed, but I myself suffer some distress. This we know."

He raised his wand, letting the tip hover over the Mark on Draco's arm. "What we do not know, is whether Miss Granger suffers when I work on her charm. No, we do not know. But shall we find out, Draco? Shall we experiment?"

Draco willed his muscles to pull his arm away from the Dark Lord, but they didn't respond, as if, through his touch, the Dark Lord had taken command of the limb.

"Shall I menace the girl's love charm with my ponderous magic? Yes, it will affect me for ill as well, but to see whether it harms Miss Granger - well, the answer to such a pressing question would certainly be worth a little discomfort on my part. Don't you think so?"

Draco tried to speak but couldn't form any words.

"Shall we try Draco? Shall we learn something from one another?" The end of the Dark Lord's wand began to glow a faint green, growing brighter as it came nearer Draco's flesh.

He still couldn't speak a word, but sound was coming from his throat anyway, weak and ragged, as if strangled.

"Or," the Dark Lord said. "You could simply tell me, Draco. She must have told you by now. What happened to her, the day before Christmas, when my wand worked her charm, here in this house? Did she suffer?"

Draco's tongue was loosed. "Yes."

"A-ha!" the Dark Lord shouted. "Yes, most illuminating, Draco. Very good. You have spared her from my experiment. How chivalrous."

He threw Draco's arm back at him. "Now. Here is what you must do. Return to your witch and tell her she must remove all traces of this charm, from you and from myself."

"She is trying, my Lord. But the magic is difficult, arcane - "

"She will remove it no later than the night before your task with the vanishing cabinets is completed, or I will remove it myself. You may think it will destroy me to do so but I tell you, boy, death has no claim on me. I may be weakened in the act, but only for a short time. Unlike the last time I was beset by such a charm, with Potter's mother, I will be prepared this time - prepared with my followers to return stronger than ever. But Miss Granger, she will die."

"Then I'll stop repairing the cabinet - "

"You will continue or your parents will die."

Draco clenched both his hands into fists. This one thing never changed.

The Dark Lord leaned close to Draco's face, his cold, fetid breath washing over Draco's mouth and nose. "You see, Draco. In me, you are faced with a being so powerful not even death can defeat me. And if there is no death for me, there is no fear, there is no loss, there is no object that can be raised to bargain against me. In me, you are helpless."

He spun around, sitting in his armchair, brandishing his wand. "Tell your witch to vanquish the charm, or die."

* * *

Wormtail slammed the door behind him and Draco came tripping back into the corridor, running toward the staircase, dressed in nothing but his trousers and shoes. Narcissa sprang from the piano bench, screeching his name and chasing him up the stairs, to the house's master suite. She was still calling after him as he flung open the lid of the jewelry box on her vanity, raking his fingers through sparkling chains and precious stones.

"Draco, darling, what do you need from there?" she said. "Let me help you. I'll give you anything. I want so badly to - "

"This, mother," he said, taking Snape's parchment from the pocket of his trousers and slamming it on the tabletop. "Sign this."

She was too frantic to read, scanning the paper from top to bottom without comprehension as he rifled through her jewelry. He stopped when he found what he was looking for: a simple platinum ring with a dark, clear emerald sunk into the band. He slid it onto his ring finger, to the first knuckle.

When he turned around, Snape was standing in the doorway.

"Professor, tell her to sign it," Draco said.

Snape conjured a quill and charmed the door shut behind himself - not that the house needed any help from him. "Madam, your son wishes to have your consent for him to engage in magic deemed too onerous for someone under-aged. He cannot continue without your written permission."

She blinked, suddenly more lucid than she'd been all day. "What kind of magic?"

"The only kind that will save me from the Dark Lord," Draco answered. "It's a corporeal love charm. And more than that, it's a matrimonial charm."

"Matrimony," she echoed. "But - but we have an agreement. We've had it for years. The Greengrass's little girl - "

Draco summoned one of his father's shirts from the cupboard to cover himself. "Mother, I won't live to honor that agreement. Perhaps none of us will. Not me, not you, and not," he paused, "not Father."

Narcissa's head turned slowly, with great pain toward Snape. Her eyes glistened with tears. "Severus?"

He stepped forward, pressing the quill into her hand. "Your son is overwrought, but he is not wrong."

"Who is the girl in the matrimonial charm? Who is her family?"

Draco groaned. "It doesn't matter."

"It does!"

"You said you'd give me anything."

"Yes, but of course not - "

"Madam Malfoy," Snape shouted over both of them. "Narcissa, I advise you to sign it - and live."


	30. Chapter 30

Hermione stood at the foot of the marble staircase, determined not to move until Crabbe and Goyle came back inside the castle. When they reappeared, they merely nodded to her across the Entrance Hall, the only sign they would give while they still didn't trust her to show that Draco had been taken away, back to Malfoy Manor to answer the call of the Dark Lord.

Reporting to Defense Against the Dark Arts class as if it was a typical day, as if Draco wasn't being interrogated by Voldemort, seemed like a ridiculous prospect - surreal. But Hermione knew herself, and knew she might feel a little less helpless if she could be close enough to Snape to let him know Draco had been taken, so she went to his classroom.

Strangely, class still hadn't started by the time she arrived. She sat by Harry but wouldn't look at him. They waited in peevish silence for half an hour - her reading, him pretending to read - until some of the other students started to leave.

"Come on, Hermione," Harry said. "Snape's not coming. It's like I said. Something's up."

"Of course something's up," she hissed at him, slamming her book shut. "Didn't I just tell you, in the corridor? Didn't you just see it for yourself?"

"All the more reason why we've got to find Snape, yeah? Let's go. We'll start in his study - "

She stood up. "I am not going anywhere with you, Harry Potter. I'm going to see Ron, like I promised to this morning. He said he'd found something out and this," she waved at Snape's emptying classroom, "is going nowhere for now. Snape could have been dragged off to the manor himself, for all we know."

In the corridor, Harry jogged to catch up with her. She might have been right about Snape's trail having gone cold. And anyway, it would be safer for Harry if his first exposure to Ron since snogging his sister happened in the presence of a third-party.

Ron shot up in bed when he saw them. "Oh, here they are, at long last. I've only been dying to tell you something all day. Harry, you didn't even come on your free period."

"Sorry. Meeting with McGonagall," he said. "They've tossed me off the quidditch team, as punishment for - yesterday."

Ron gasped. "No. Wow. Sorry, mate."

Harry shrugged, glancing guiltily at Hermione. None of the defenses of sectumsempra that Ginny had raised outside McGonagall's office sounded any good as he remembered them while standing in front of someone who loved Draco Malfoy.

"They could have done worse," was all he said. Eager to divert the conversation away from himself, he added, "Katie is the new captain, now she's back. Probably should have been her all along, really. More experienced and all."

Ron shook his head. "She'll do alright. Still…" He shook his head again.

Hermione cleared her throat. "So I started my research with Snape this morning," she said, gently reminding Ron he had something to tell her. "He had books on Mitrian charms stowed in his office, good ones written in plain language rather than cyphers, so that's promising."

It might have been promising for her, but the boys had no idea what she meant by it.

Ron began with an extraordinary comment. "Look, Hermione, forget the books for a moment. Pansy and I were talking and she thought of something better."

Hermione raised both of her eyebrows, assuming her battle stance for the second time that morning.

"Don't give me that look," Ron said. "All we're saying is, if you've got questions about old monks' spells, if you want some of their missing pieces filled in, who better to ask than an old monk?"

Hermione frowned. "That's a fanciful line of reasoning, but - "

"No," he interrupted, rising to his knees on his bed. "No, there's nothing fanciful about it. Remember the Hufflepuff ghost - he comes out every sorting ceremony to wish everyone a happy sorting into Hufflepuff. You remember, Harry, from Nick's deathday party, years ago?"

Hermione's jaw fell open. "They call him the Fat Friar. He's a monk."

"Yes," Ron was beaming, "been here since the early days of Hogwarts."

"Around the tenth century!" Hermione squealed. The girl groaning over her aching tummy, three beds over, rolled away from the noise. "All this time, there's been a monk floating around in the basement who might have known the Mitrians."

"Or even been one."

"Yes, Ronald, it is brilliant!"

"That's my Pansy."

Harry rolled his eyes.

Ron saw it and pointed a finger sharply at Harry's chest. "None of that from you, Harry. You'd better not have anything to say about other people's girlfriends now you've gone and - "

Hermione jumped between them. "Not now, Ron. We need to find this ghost. I can't wait until the next sorting ceremony to see what he knows about corporeal love charms."

Ron scoffed. "Right. Now you're in a hurry - "

"Ron, are you coming?" she said.

He slumped back into his bed. "No, I'm not allowed to leave here before tomorrow at the earliest."

Hermione and Harry slowly turned to each other, like a pair of siblings forced to make up. It had not been a good morning for them. The noon hour was about to start and all Harry wanted to do was find Ginny and disappear. But the sooner Hermione figured out how to use that charm against Voldemort, the sooner Malfoy's vanishing cabinet could be destroyed.

His resistance to helping Malfoy - it was deeply ingrained and always felt virtuous to Harry. After all these years, how was he supposed to be able to tell whether the resistance came from his own good instincts, or whether it was manipulation through the nightmare link between himself and Voldemort?

Dumbledore had told him love was his strength and he should let it lead him. And when he took a moment in the hospital wing, his eyes fixed on Hermione's face while Ron watched on hopefully, he sensed his power to love leading him to stop resisting, at least long enough to join the hunt for the Hufflepuff ghost.

* * *

Severus Snape stood in Narcissa Black Malfoy's bedroom, between her and her son, his arm extended, his fingers grasping a quill. "Sign it," he told her. "Sign your consent for the matrimonial charm."

She pressed her fists to her temples and gave a strangled scream. "The Blacks and Malfoys are pure-blood families."

"Bollocks!" Draco shouted. "Aunt Andromeda - "

"My line, your father's line - both are pure. Your line, Draco, will honor that purity. It's settled."

"It's not, Mother. Nothing is settled. Everything changed the moment that creature downstairs came back."

Snape's fingers closed, vice-like, around Draco's chin. "Silence," he said. "Both of you. The Dark Lord gathers with his servants in the dining hall downstairs. You are excused, Draco, to care for your mother while Bellatrix attends the meeting. You will take this time to say what you must, and when I return, Madam Malfoy, I expect your signature to be in order. If it is not, we may proceed, at greater risk, without you."

He spun on the spot and marched out the door.

Draco finished dressing, fastening himself into one of his father's odd, old-fashioned shirts, black overlaid with a slightly less black pattern, high collared, and closed with a buckle at one shoulder. He smoothed it over his abdomen and looked up to find his mother building to a crescendo of weeping.

"Lucius…" she wailed.

"Mother, enough," he said, leading her to sit on the edge of the bed. "Father tried to make us safe and strong in his way, and it hasn't worked. It was awful. I can't continue in that way. And I can't continue on my own and unattached either."

"Tell me her name," Narcissa sobbed. "You won't even tell me her name."

"Mother, it's Hermione Granger. Yes, a Muggle-born witch. You've seen her. She was with Harry Potter and the Weasley boy in Madam Malkin's this September."

Narcissa frowned. "I remember the incident, but nothing about her."

"No you wouldn't," he said. "Through the whole confrontation, she was poised and perfect. She's flagrantly brilliant and under-statedly beautiful. And I've been mad about her since the Yule Ball in my fourth year when I taught her to dance for the dignitaries. She deserved that honor, Mother. Her magical abilities are astounding. She's the best in our year - in the entire school. She's powerful enough to force the Dark Lord himself to take notice."

"With Potter," Narcissa repeated. "Was she with Potter - was she there - in the Ministry - the night your father - Sirius and Bella?"

He nodded, eyes cast down. "Yes, she was there. She came away badly injured, but not by Father himself."

Narcissa's hands fluttered from her lap to her face. "Draco, how can we accept each other? After all of that? I don't understand - has she abandoned Potter for you?"

"No, Mother. She's loyal to both of us."

Narcissa shook her head. "That is not how loyalty works, darling." Her eyes grew wild again. "It's a trap. She's tricked you. They'll kill you."

Draco gathered her hands in his. "No, Mother, it's the people downstairs who are going to kill me. And Hermione hasn't trapped me. It's me who wants her. If you try to interfere, I'll find a way to enter into the matrimonial charm without you. It was crafted in the tenth century, after all. At my age in the tenth century, I'd be a seasoned married man and a father several times over so - "

"Draco, don't," she said, tearing her hands away from him, clamping them over her ears. "You can't."

She was on her feet and running toward the door, down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she didn't seem to know where to go, and fell to sitting, as if by default, on her piano bench.

Draco followed her, chasing at first but slowing as he descended the stairs, approaching her as if she was a skittish animal. Gently, he slid onto the piano bench beside her, as if the heated conversation in the bedroom had never happened.

"Shall I play, Mother?"

"Yes, Draco. That would be lovely."

He began from the top of the Rachmaninoff prelude he'd been playing when Wormtail interrupted him earlier. He played the low, deep opening chords softly, like thunder heard from far away. Narcissa settled beside him, leaning against his arm.

"I couldn't finish the song before. You haven't heard all of it yet," he said to her. "Hold tight. It gets louder."

In a few bars, he was playing the dynamics as written, low and loud. "Remember the name, Mother? Rachmaninoff, our brilliant Muggle composer. Listen to it - all the emotion, the power, the deceptively simple sophistication. Feel it behind your sternum, it resonates in your heart's core, just like it does in a Muggle's heart."

He beat the piano keys, faster and harder, playing the instrument as loudly as it could be played, filling the vaulted spaces of the manor's grand entrance hall, the music dashing itself against the hard stone walls, amplified and multiplied.

The sound piled on top of Narcissa, crushing her, and she slid from the seat of the piano bench, onto the floor where Draco's feet worked the pedals. Her head drooped to rest next to his knee, and her tears renewed themselves, crying against his leg as he played.

"It hurts," she said.

"Just enough to open us up," he answered, the speed of the music abating, reaching the end.

The crashing of keys and chords had not gone unnoticed by the Death Eaters attempting to hold a meeting not far away, in the dining hall. If there were more rests in the middle part of the piece, Draco and Narcissa might have heard Wormtail knocking from inside the dining room door, calling out to them to stop, wrenching on the doorknob to get out of the room and force them to stop. But the house held him inside - held all of them inside, ignoring their demands and threats as they realized they were imprisoned, if only for a few moments, until Draco finished his song.

The music ended, the reverberations of the notes dying away through the halls. The angry voices of the captive Death Eaters, now led by Bellatrix's shrieks, were audible to the Malfoys now. In seconds, the house would click its lock open and let them out - either that or the Dark Lord would rise from his seat to blast the door off its hinges himself.

In the momentarily quiet hall, Narcissa lifted her head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "Rachmaninoff," she said. "Draco, the quill."

* * *

Harry had got the Map from his room and he and Hermione stood in the corridor outside the Gryffindor Tower searching it for the Fat Friar. It was hard for Harry not to be distracted by Ginny's dot, pacing in front of the entrance to the Great Hall, as if she was waiting for him to go into lunch with her.

Malfoy's dot had still not reappeared.

"There's hardly anyone in the Hufflepuff basement," Hermione observed. "They do like a good lunch, don't they?"

"Lunch, right," Harry said. "Would a ghost known for overeating enjoy haunting the halls outside a kitchen, or would it just make him miserable that he can no longer eat?"

"However he feels about it, he's not there now," Hermione said. "Wait, Harry. There's a portrait of the monk somewhere. I've seen it. He might stay close to it."

"Portrait," Harry echoed, examining the corridors they knew to be most densely festooned with portraits. "There," he said, "on the fourth floor."

Hermione followed him down the stairs, to a quiet corridor where a wispy white figure floated above the stone floor, a large stein lifted to his mouth, his head tipped back, trying to drain it. He lowered his cup, closed one eye, and peered inside, sighing.

"Death is alright," he said, as if in soliloquy. "Not bad at all until it's time to eat. And then - woe is me. Woe indeed."

He reared back, as if he was about to throw himself into his portrait, stopping only when Harry called out to him.

"Ah!" he said, floating toward them. "A pair of poor souls sorted into Gryffindor. You're missing your lunch, young lions. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die, whatever the good book says..."

"Please, Friar," Hermione began. "We've come for your wisdom in magic."

"You have?"

"Yes. You see, I've cast a charm," Hermione said. "A powerful corporeal love charm, after the Mitrian way. But I've only just learned I've done it by halves."

The Friar sat back, hooking his thumbs in his belt. "Best not take half measures with old, strong, beautiful magic like that. Takes a steady hand and the entire heart."

She swallowed, a quiver in her voice as she agreed. "Yes, it was a beautiful charm. But it was attacked by a dark wizard who fractured it. In the act, he accidentally bound himself to it - to us. I need to restore the charm to just - just me and my loved one."

Harry shifted from foot to foot.

The friar was openly scandalized. "A third? In an ancient corporeal love charm? How can there be a third? In this part of the world, all matrimonial charms are crafted for two."

"Yes, sir. The trouble was I cast it knowing only half of the manuscript, with none of the matrimonial rites. I need to fix it, and soon."

"Yes, yes," the Friar agreed. "If your third is a dark wizard, you are in danger by being so close to him. Your very life is in peril."

"It's true," she said. "Please help us."

"Wait," Harry interrupted. "Is there any way to repair this without simply adding the matrimonial rites? Can't it be simply - ended?"

The Friar clucked his tongue. "The Mitrian brethren did not anticipate modern ideas like matrimonial endings. Why do you ask, young Gryffindor? Don't you like her?"

Harry sputtered. "No, no - yes, I like her but - er - it's not for me, sir. The charm involves someone else as her partner."

"Oh, I see. And you'd prefer her unattached," he chuckled, his insubstantial elbow poking at Harry's ribs.

Harry jumped away. "No, Friar. It's just that she's so young, and their families don't get on, and the boy with the charm, he's - he's bloody awful."

"Harry!"

"Come on, Hermione," he burst. "I can't stand here and listen to another word about you marrying him, or marrying anyone. Not now, and especially not them. Listen to me, Hermione. He offered me his hand once, in friendship, and refusing to take it was the best decision I ever made."

She took Harry's hand herself. "You were both eleven years old that day, Harry. An awful lot has happened since then."

He tugged his hand away. "Yes, and nothing to recommend the Malfoys as in-laws, I'm sorry to say. And how could you be married and still in school. It's a mess."

"It's not ideal," she said, her voice rising. "But there are worse things in life than marrying someone you love at the wrong time."

"Are there?"

"Yes, and you would choose the same way if you were in my position, Harry. Just like you, I won't let anyone die over this. And I won't let the castle fill up with Death Eaters over it either."

Harry growled in frustration. "Then let's go upstairs, destroy the cabinet, and figure the rest out later."

She stamped her foot. "We are not going anywhere until the Friar tells us what he knows," she said. "If you please, Friar."

The ghost drifted in a figure eight around Harry and Hermione. "True enough, you won't find anything in the old texts on how to end the charm. There may be a way to do it, but you'll have to craft it yourself. It will be an experiment, with nothing promised."

"Can't we end it for just one of us? For just the third?" she asked.

The Friar pursed his lips. "I've never heard of such a thing. Either way, you will have to craft new magic, either to end the charm or to sever the third. Both would be untried. No," he said, rubbing his belly with his palms, "the only promise I can make is that the matrimonial charm will restore the charm to a covenant between two individuals, new and stronger. The third will be cut off, but left torn and damaged, weakened."

Hermione grabbed Harry's sleeve. "I told you, Harry. He's close enough that we can hurt him."

"He said you could hurt a third person, but Voldemort is no ordinary third," Harry said. He turned to the Friar. "What could he do to them, as he's tearing away? Could he lash out and hurt them in return?"

The Friar drew his figure eight between them again. "The third will be in a subordinate position, but not a helpless one, especially if the third is a wizard of great power. There will be significant risk to all of you."

"I accept that. Now, what do we do?" Hermione rushed, before Harry could make any more objections.

The Friar hummed. "If the spell is half cast, then I assume only one of you has been inscribed with a charm? Well then, the other member of the pair will need to be inscribed, in the same way and with much the same mark as the first. Same familiar, same incantation - "

"There was no incantation," Hermione said.

The Friar gaped at her. "No incantation?" He circled around her, looking her over from head to foot. "And it worked all the same? It worked well enough to withstand an attack and enslave the attacker?"

Hermione's eyes followed him as he circled. "I suppose it must have."

The Friar drifted to a stop in front of her, floating so close that her face sank into his misty barrel chest. The Friar's jolly tone was replaced by one of awe. "What manner of witch are you, young Gryffindor?"

"Is that it?" Harry interrupted. "One matching tattoo and they're free of Voldemort for good? But will they be stuck married after that?"

The Friar's drifted away from Hermione. "Of course they will be. And if they're lucky that will be the only lingering effect. The tearing away of the third will be dangerous and must not be taken for granted. Talented as you are, Miss Gryffindor, I advise you to use a verbal incantation next time. Compose it carefully. Take what you can from the old texts. Follow them scrupulously. And for the second inscription, you will require witnesses. It cannot be done in private."

"It's a bloody wedding," Harry groaned.

The Friar's jolly tone was returning "Yes, if you want to gather strength, make it a wedding. Bring your loved ones. Draw power from them. But don't delay. As soon as the stars are right, proceed, before either of you or your familiar are attacked again. And," he added, "what was the word you inscribed, on the first charm? Which of the virtues did you choose."

Hermione stood taller. "I chose hope."

The Friar beamed at her. "Very good. Now, for the second inscription, you must advance beyond that. For the second, the name of the charm must be 'faith,' as you will need to have faith in and show faith to each other."

Harry sighed, his face in his hands.

"And finally," the Friar finished, rounding on Harry, "if this one can't find any joy in your matrimonial rites, then don't invite him to come along."

* * *

The rest of the day passed at a painful crawl. By suppertime, Draco still hadn't returned to the castle. Hermione had the Map, and sat reading it like a terrible book where the letters kept rearranging themselves, and the story never moved any farther along.

No one answered whenever she knocked on the door of Snape's study. He was still away from school himself, the books she needed locked behind his well-guarded doors.

The sun still set early during this time of winter. She dressed herself in her warmest cloak and went outside to wait for Draco in the dark. She settled herself on a wooden bench not far inside the castle gates, out of the view of the sentry Aurors, where the path split into two - one path heading up the hill to the castle, and the other curving toward the ice encrusted expanse of the lake.

In the dark, she waited, breathing on her hands, gathering her cloak closer and closer. Time passed, the stars moving through cold space overhead.

At last, she heard voices, the silky voice of Snape identifying both himself and Draco to the Aurors. She sprang to her feet, rushing forward to meet them. Snape could see her, the Aurors could see her, but she did it anyway. She flung her arms around Draco's neck and pulled him down to kiss his cheek as he stepped back into the safety of the Hogwarts grounds. She said nothing for fear that she'd be crying of relief the moment she tried. He felt like a miracle between her arms - her boy who had survived another day of terror with Lord Voldemort.

She was so cold his heart ached to think of her waiting outdoors for him. With a hot mouth, he kissed all over the surface of her face, raising the temperature of her skin, assuring her he was alive and well, still himself. He cleansed himself of the filthy aura of the Dark Lord which could not cling to him in the presence of the way he felt about her.

He pulled her inside the warmth he still held against himself, within the heavy folds of his father's cloak. In the dimness, she seemed to disappear into the lush, black fabric, as in a Muggle magic trick.

Snape rolled his eyes at the scene. "Mind your curfew, Draco. Don't take too long getting back to the castle," he said, leaving them there, on the frozen grass.

"You're safe," she finally said against his neck.

At the sound of her voice, he held her even tighter. "Yes, I'm alright. And you? Nothing hurt you today?"

She shook her head. "Nothing." She looked up at him in the moonlight, smoothing his hair with her palm. "Draco, we've made some excellent progress today."

"So have I. And I'm ready," he said, "for what comes next."


	31. Chapter 31

Draco and Hermione stood wrapped in his father's warmest winter cloak just inside the gates of the Hogwarts grounds.

"Is it alright if we stay outside a little longer?" he asked her, his forehead pressed to hers. "Privacy is hard to get inside the castle, and we need to settle something."

Her heart gave a thud. "Yes, of course. Let's sit somewhere sheltered, at the very least. The golden willow?"

They followed the path away from the castle, toward the lake, moonlight reflecting from the hoary white ice frozen to its surface. Draco kept Hermione bundled against him inside the cloak, and at first, she mistook their closeness as the reason for his awkward gait.

"Draco, you're limping."

He grunted, frustrated with himself for letting her notice. "Just a little. I'm sore but not injured."

She stopped them from moving any farther down the path, lighting her wand to look him over. "Oh my stars, Draco. You can hardly stand. What did he do to you? We need to get you straight to the hospital, or to Snape - "

"Snape was there when it happened. He watched the whole thing and assured me I'm alright. There's nothing anyone can do for me but let me sleep it off. And I am not going to bed yet."

She ducked beneath his arm, draping it over her shoulders, bearing some of his weight on herself as they resumed their walk, demanding to be told exactly what happened to him.

He blew out a long breath. "The Dark Lord punished me for making a racket after being told to be quiet. My mother and I had some things to negotiate, and it got a bit out of hand. Typical Malfoy family drama, really. Don't know what else he expected when he moved in."

It was something like a joke but Hermione did not find it amusing. "He scolded you for being noisy? Like a shirty kindergarten teacher?"

"It was for the defiance, not the noise itself," Draco said, smirking now. "Though we were extraordinarily disruptive. Felt extremely liberating, actually. There was a grand piano involved. And the house went and imprisoned a room full of Death Eaters including the Dark Lord himself for three entire minutes while we carried on. So after all of that, he couldn't let our disobedience go unpunished, especially with so many witnesses. Think of what that might have started. No, one of the Malfoys had to answer for it, and it couldn't be Mother."

They had reached the tree. He leaned heavily on it, panting slightly as her questioning went on. "Quit stalling, Draco, and tell me what he did to you."

"It was the Cruciatus curse," he admitted at last. "Don't panic, Hermione. It was just on my legs, nowhere with any vital organs."

"Still, Draco," her voice was shaking. "How could they let him - and Snape just stood there?"

"Naturally. It's what he always does," Draco said. "No matter what happens, he can always force himself to stand there and watch. It's why he's so good at this double-sided game. And why I'm so bad at it."

It broke her heart to imagine it. She comforted both of them by fussing over him, using her wand to melt the frost from the grass underneath the drooping boughs of the leafless tree, before easing him to sit on the warmed, dried ground beneath it.

"Torturing young boys - he's a consummate monster. He's crucio-ed Harry and all - a full-body Cruciatus curse, levelled at him right after he saw Cedric get killed," she said, helping Draco bend his wounded legs, keeping them snug and covered by his cloak. "Harry said it was like being stabbed with a thousand white hot knives."

"Did he?" Draco shuddered. "It was like a burning for me too, but pulling and tearing rather than stabbing, like a blindingly intense muscle cramp all over my legs and feet - awful but undamaging. I'm weak and sore, but I'm unhurt."

"I'm so sorry," she said, tucking herself back inside the cloak with him, pressing her palms to his cold cheeks and kissing him with a gentle, slow sweetness. He wasn't sure if it was magic or not, but as she drew her face away from his, it was as if she was drawing his pain away with her, leaving him with the feeling of being about to drift peacefully off to sleep after a terrible day.

Inviting as it was, he leaned away from sleep, back in Hermione's direction, determined to stay awake. He looked around their cold but sheltered spot by the lake, imagining it lit with sunshine. "Remember when we were here together on your seventeenth birthday?" he said. "That was a nice afternoon. Normal, quiet time together, though we've never really been a normal, quiet couple. We've had hardly any days like that this year."

She hummed. "What about the day we spent together in Harry's house in London during the holidays? The circumstances were strange but it was just you and me, quiet and fairly normal all day long - not running or scheming or pretending anything. Kind of a domestic paradise - or at least a fantasy of one."

He kissed the top of her head. "I could live like that."

Normally, she would have given a smile and a quick word of agreement. But the mood was different tonight, not a time for flippant responses. She tipped her head back to try to see his face in the darkness. It seemed important to be able to read him. Unsatisfied, she took a scrap of parchment from her pocket - the prefects' schedule, which she could easily replace - crumpled it into a ball, and lit it on fire. It burned slowly, suspended in the air beside them, orange, warm and bright.

In the soft light of her spell, Draco took both of her hands, cupped them between his own and breathed on them, opening his hands again to kiss each of her knuckles.

"Hermione," he began. "I won't say that the benefits our love charm might have for other people shouldn't be factors in planning our futures. And I won't say that I wouldn't rather be having this conversation when we're older and it made more sense. What I will say is that I know I'll never meet anyone who is braver or wiser or better in every way that matters to me than you. No one will ever be as beautiful to me. No one will ever make me as happy as you do. Your ability to accept me as I am is - I don't understand how you do it. But right now, it's the key to what little is still good in my life."

She mewed a sweet sound. "Draco, don't praise me for that. It's easy for me to love you - inevitable, irresistible. It's necessary for my own happiness. It's not some act of noble longsuffering. I love you just because I do." She bent her head and kissed his hands in return.

And then she noticed the ring. The small platinum ring pushed against the joint of his ring finger, she touched it with her fingertip.

She nodded. "The monks - "

He hushed her, pulling her face against his shoulder, kissing her ear before whispering into it. "I don't want to talk about how it might be done or why it has to happen this way. At this moment, this is only about us." He sat back so she could watch him as he took the ring from his finger and slid it onto hers. "You'll marry me, won't you Hermione? I'm already yours forever. Come home to me a little earlier than you might've liked, but do come. Please..."

It might have been enchanted, but the ring fit well. In the dim light, Hermione couldn't tell the colour of the stone, only that it glinted within the shiny band. Draco's head was tipped close to hers, his breath stirring her hair, fast and shallow in time with his racing heartbeat, as he waited.

She laced their fingers together, the ring - her ring - clicking against his signet.

"I will."

Draco's posture straightened. "You said 'yes'?"

She laughed softly, boosting herself onto her knees and turning around to face him. "Of course I said 'yes'." She leaned into him, her lips on his, until the back of his head came to rest against the tree's smooth, cold trunk. Her kiss was deep and alive, her mouth working over his, her hands in his hair, breathing his scent into her nose, her pulse thrumming in her throat. His mouth was warm and knew how to answer hers, his arms around her body, holding her as close as he could.

Her eyelashes fluttered against his cheek as her mind indulged in ecstatic thoughts she'd never let herself fully explore before. Draco Lucius Malfoy was going to be her husband, joined to her for the rest of their lives, imprinted on her skin, their magic intertwined, harmonized. She would share her body with him, as if he was her second, auxiliary self. In return, she would touch and love all of him. If she ever had children, they would be his, her blood merged with his and made the same, only...

"Your parents," she said, breaking away as Draco chased after her, breathless. "Your birthday isn't for months. We'll need to get their consent. They need to - "

"Already signed it," he said against her neck, kissing from her jaw to her shoulder. "That's what all the noise was about at the Manor today. It was tense, but in the end, she did sign it."

She tipped her head back, giving him access to her throat, signalling that even though she was talking, he should not stop. "My parents," she said. "They gave me those pills, so they're resigned to the idea of you shagging me - "

He moaned greedily against her neck at the mention of it.

"But they're not Mitrian monks. They're Muggle Baby Boomers. They don't equate sex with matrimony. They're going to hate this," she said, lowering her chin. "And in the Muggle world, they'd still be able to stop us, since I'm not eighteen."

"Then don't bring it into the Muggle world," he said, leaving off kissing her neck as she whimpered in protest. "You're thinking too much like an enlightened Muggle-born witch who has to reconcile both worlds. Stop that for once. Just tell them we've entered into some lovey-dovey wizard bond that's got nothing to do with Muggle law but means we're," he cleared his throat, "REALLY close. Just don't use the word marriage. And then when we're in our twenties, or however old they'd like us, they can throw us whatever kind of Muggle wedding they want, with their Muggle law, and we can act like your Madam Malfoy days begin then."

She widened her eyes. "So very cunning."

"Yes, well, goods as advertised," he said, taking her lips again.

She smiled into the kiss, but had to draw herself away again. "So that's the progress you made today. Now I need to tell you mine."

He sighed and sat back against the tree trunk. "Right. Go on then."

She told him about her interview with the Fat Friar.

"Pansy thought of it?" he beamed. "Well done, Pansy."

Hermione didn't get jealous very often, but at this exclamation, she came close.

She went on to tell him about the spell not having been crafted with a way to end it. It was indeed intended as a foundation for the matrimonial rites, and that though the rites would sever the Dark Lord from them, his closeness would likely give him an opportunity to wound them as he left.

"But does it work the same way for us?" Draco asked. "Could we use this as an opportunity to hurt him? Not just through the process of severing him, but through a direct attack?"

Hermione shrugged. "I can't imagine how to do that. In all these years, the only one to ever hurt him has been Harry."

Draco jerked, forgetting the pain in his legs for a moment. "Potter," he said. "Remember in the hospital wing, when we activated the charm and he was suddenly flattened by a headache?"

Hermione gasped. "There's not only a third person caught up in our charm, Draco. There's a fourth. There's Harry. Can that be true?"

Draco was nodding. "It makes sense. Harry is connected to the Dark Lord. Snape's told us so and we saw evidence of it ourselves that day in the hospital."

"Dumbledore has told Harry the same," Hermione confessed. "Draco, what do we do?"

He sat silently, shaking his head.

"When we do the rest of the charm the - the wedding, that is," she said, stumbling over the word, "we'll need Harry there. We'll need him there to make sure he's safe, and to go after You-know-who. If anyone is going to be able to use the occasion to make an attack on the Dark Lord, it will be Harry."

Draco smirked. "Looks like Potter is going to be our best man after all."

Hermione frowned. "It's not funny, Draco. It's bad. Harry hates the idea of us getting married. You should have heard the way he sassed the Friar about it today. It was awful."

Draco gathered her in his arms. "Oh, he'll come around. I'm more worried about Crookshanks cooperating, frankly."

She was still frowning.

Draco pressed his fingertip between her eyes to smooth her furrowed brow. "Come on, Hermione. There's nothing Harry wouldn't do to harm the Dark Lord. And whether Potter helps or not, we have to go ahead. There's no other option. The Dark Lord knows you get hurt if he activates the charm himself, and he brought me in today to threaten us with precisely that."

Hermione heaved a loud sigh.

Draco went on. "He is happy to kill you and willing to harm himself to the point of needing to be resuscitated by his followers if it means getting out of this charm. It's something else we have until the end of term to sort out before everyone I love starts dying over it."

She blinked at him. "Thank you for not making that your proposal."

"And thank you for saying yes before I had to bring it up." He kissed her again, tenderly. "Don't ever think I proposed to you for any reason more important than always wanting to be with you."

She nestled her head beneath his chin, her face in the hollow of his throat. "So since you're the expert on ignoring Muggles, do we invite my parents to the ritual or not?"

"Definitely invite them," he said. "It's not safe for them to be out and about, unprotected when we go head to head with the Dark Lord. Bring them in for their own safety."

"They'll be cross about having to close the surgery over this," she said. "Oh, that's another thing. I need you to formulate a star chart so we can pick the right date for all of this. I'll be busy composing the incantation."

Draco's face brightened. "I get to choose the date?"

She tutted. "The stars choose the date. You just read them."

He was already getting carried away. "I want to choose your dress too," he said, making that greedy moan against her neck again. "Wear the one my mother sent you for the Yule Ball. You know it, the periwinkle blue one with the crystals. It came all this way but you never got the chance to wear it for anyone but me."

She couldn't keep from smiling at him. But she said, "Draco, that dress has long, fitted sleeves. How are you going to make an inscription on my arm through a sleeve, no matter how pretty it is?"

"We'll get around it somehow," he growled.

His breath was tickling her and she yelped a laugh, her voice reverberating over the broad empty expanse of the lake. The noise startled both of them, bringing them back to where they were - at school, still students, with a curfew to meet.

Draco sat up, away from her neck, attempting to smooth her hair back into place. "Well, it wouldn't do for us to start our lives together by freezing to death under a tree, would it?"

She shook her head, righting herself. "No. And it's going to be a long, painful walk back to the castle for you, so we'd better get started."

She stood up first, helping him lumber to his feet. He leaned on her shoulder and she turned her face to him to confirm he was ready to leave. He raised a hand to touch her face. "Look at you," he said. "It's beyond belief. I am beyond happy. I am - "

"Recovering from a Cruciatus curse," she finished. "And it's my responsibility to get you home."

He closed his arms around her. "Your responsibility," he repeated. "That's my girl, for life."


	32. Chapter 32

Ann Granger stepped outside, into her front garden, to get the morning paper. The winter sun hadn't quite finished rising, but the day was warm enough that she came out dressed only in her house slippers, pajamas, and her fluffiest dressing gown. As she stood up from fetching the paper, she saw that she was no longer alone on her quiet street. Two large, ugly women in long, full dresses were advancing soundlessly up the walk.

Ann pulled her glasses down over her eyes and saw that the ugly faces were actually masks, hard and shining like armour. She jumped. But then she saw the short, ornate sticks held in each of her visitor's hands.

"Oh, you're Hermione's people," she called out. "Yes, I see you've got the - well, the wands and everything."

The lead visitor waved a wand toward the mask and it vanished, revealing the pale, blunt-featured face of a man about Ann's age.

"Oh, there you," Ann said. "How do you do? Is everything quite alright? Your lot doesn't usually turn up like this."

The man attempted a smile but it was altogether unpleasant. "It's Mrs. Granger, is it?"

"Dr. Granger, actually," Ann said, standing straighter as uneasiness finally came over her. She was about to turn her head to call inside the house for Tim. But the man in wizard robes was coming closer, a cold, menacing darkness radiating from him.

Ann decided. She reached behind herself, took hold of the doorknob, and shut Tim safely inside.

She lifted her chin. "If you have a message to deliver, please do. Otherwise, I will return to my morning affairs."

_Don't come out, Tim. Don't come out._

Without another word, Corban Yaxley stupefied Ann Granger, catching her body in the crook of one arm as it fell, sneering, disgusted at how easy it was to stun a Muggle. The masked Death Eater behind him summoned two brooms. Yaxley mounted his, bending Ann over it like a sack of laundry.

"There's another one inside," the man behind the mask said.

Yaxley snarled. "Well, I don't have any more time for this. It's almost full daylight, I'm expected in the Minister's office in two hours, and we've still got to fly out to Wiltshire. This shouldn't have been made my problem - "

"You would question the Dark Lord's commands?"

"Oh, shut it, Carrow," he hissed. "And it's ridiculous that he won't let us apparate with them. Yes, they're unworthy of it but - "

Amycus Carrow stood as tall as he could, still looking up at Yaxley as he bellowed from behind his mask. "How dare you?"

"Enough, Carrow. There's no one here for you to kiss up to, and I am not impressed. If you're really that keen on being a faithful servant, go inside and round up this one's husband yourself."

With that, Yaxley kicked off the Granger family's lawn and into the air.

Carrow was quick to follow.

* * *

On the first morning of her engagement, Hermione awakened early, already smiling to herself. She rolled onto her back and held her left hand in front of her face, seeing her new ring in daylight for the first time. The shiny white metal gleamed like a mirror, not a scratch on it. Though the ring was in pristine condition, there was something about it that made it look old all the same.

The stone set into the metal, she was not surprised to observe, was an emerald, vivid green, the clearest one she had ever seen. She didn't mind the Slytherin house colours. It was a sign that she and Draco belonged to each other, though it did give her an impulse to knit him a long, red scarf. She laughed to herself as she rolled onto her side and pulled her hand into her chest.

Parvati sat up in her own bed, unbraiding her hair. "What're you giggling about?"

Hermione sighed. "Nothing."

Parvati was standing, jamming her feet into her slippers. "Having a private gloat over keeping your thing with Draco Malfoy to yourselves for so long? Because you weren't actually fooling anyone, Hermione."

"I know. Thanks for putting up with me," she said. "Where are you off to, so early?"

"Well, quidditch practice is on, and Dean Thomas is single now, isn't he? So off I go." Parvati grinned, flipping her hair as she zipped into the bathroom. "Give my love to Draco."

Hermione looked down at her ring. For all her love of getting and spreading news, Parvati didn't seem to have noticed it. Maybe no one else would. Or maybe everyone else would, and she should take it off before they did. They hadn't talked about how they'd handle the information, and maybe it should be kept a secret for - who knows how long.

No, she would leave it. For all she knew, a barrage of curses might rain down on anyone but a Malfoy who tried to remove the ring, and she was not a Malfoy yet. Ridiculous thought. She laughed at herself and pulled her blanket over her head.

Draco was limping only slightly when she saw him coming late to breakfast in the Great Hall. He had been too proud to let himself be levitated up the hill to the castle last night, but by the time they arrived inside he was in enough pain that Hermione led him to Snape's office for a potion to relieve the ache rather than back to the Slytherin dungeon.

She had snogged him soundly, noisily, dangerously up against the wall at the top of Snape's stairwell until his wounded legs started to give out, before letting him go, but she was still disappointed that their final parting for the night had been in front of Snape himself. It made for an anticlimactic end to their evening, but it did give Draco a chance to tell Snape what they'd decided.

Now, from the threshold of the Great Hall, Draco spotted Hermione already sitting at the Gryffindor table, between Harry and Ron. Without a trace of a sneer, he smiled and walked toward them.

"No," Harry groaned at the sight of him. "No, no, he's not - oh no."

Hermione hushed him.

"Oh, it's like that now, is it?" said Ron, in a tone much brighter than Harry's. He stood up from the table himself and strode toward the Slytherin side of the room. He was just filling the spot reserved for Draco, beside Pansy, as Draco sat down in Ron's vacated seat.

"Good morning, darling," Draco said into Hermione's ear, somewhere between a whisper and a kiss.

She laughed and raised a hand to his cheek.

Harry faked a loud retching sound.

"Where's your Weasley girl this morning, Potter?" Draco said.

Unfortunately, the remark sounded to Harry like a taunt over no longer being required at the quidditch practice that had occupied Ginny long enough to make her late for breakfast. He stood up, angry.

Hermione snagged his sleeve. "Harry, he doesn't mean it like that. I haven't told him you're not on the team anymore."

Draco cringed at himself. He swore. "Sorry, Potter."

Stunned at the apology and at how genuinely unhappy Draco looked with himself, Harry didn't know what to say next.

Hermione was tugging on his arm. "Do sit down, Harry. We've got a lot to discuss."

He sighed as if in pain but sat beside her, eyeing her quizzically as her left hand stayed gripped to his arm. He looked down at it. Harry swore. "What have you got on your hand, Hermione? No, don't tell me. Is that…?"

She rolled the ring on her finger as he gawked at it. "Yes. We've decided."

He sat back. "Well then, it's like the Friar said yesterday: I've got no joy in it, so leave me out of it." Harry was stepping over the bench to leave.

"Harry, no. It's not that simple."

"Sure it is. Congratulations and good luck."

* * *

Ann Granger opened her eyes to find herself looking at the most extraordinary ceiling overhead. It was finished in white plaster but sculpted like rolling surf, moving and surging, figures like ships and sea creatures pitching and leaping through and across it.

Still lying on her back, she raised a hand to her face to rub her eyes. As she did, someone nearby gasped, and Ann's view of the ceiling was cut off by a small, pale face, wild grey eyes looking into hers. Ann lifted a finger to poke the face in its cheek, testing whether it was another mask. The cheek was warm and soft, and as Ann focused on its wild grey eyes, they smiled.

"There you are!" the woman with the face said. "Oh, I'm so glad. I wasn't sure Renneverate would work on a Muggle."

Ann sat up from where she'd been lying on a rather sumptuous bed, holding herself across her waist. Her entire middle was sore, as if she'd been hanging by it.

"I don't know a thing about Muggles," the woman went on, twisting the ends of her white blond hair together, as if she wanted to braid them but no longer knew how. "There has certainly never been a Muggle inside this house before today. I must say it's tolerating you rather well."

The woman backed herself into a corner of the room, touching the walls as if to show them to Ann. "You can see the house, can't you? It doesn't look to you like we're hanging over an empty field or some such thing, does it?"

Ann took in a painful breath, her voice hoarse. "I can see we're in a house."

The woman looked inordinately relieved to hear it, rushing out of the corner and back to the bed. "Well, let's hope the house doesn't lash out at you. That's the last thing we need, what with HIM lurking around downstairs."

Ann shook her head, clearing her throat. "Pardon me, Madam. Where is this place and who are you?"

The woman turned in a circle, light on her feet, like a dancer in her dirty brocade dress. "I'm Cissa," she said. "And this is my manor-house. It's been in my husband's family for centuries. But you will not find him at home today." Her arms fell to her sides, her chin quivering, as if she were suddenly on the verge of tears.

Ann's mind was working, evaluating her situation, biting back her body's urge to panic. She was hurt, but not badly. She had clearly been taken away by some of Hermione's magical people from their front garden, but Tim seemed to have been spared. The men who took her did not seem friendly, but this woman certainly was. She claimed to be the mistress of the house Ann had been taken to, but she seemed more like a captive herself - more of a Bertha Rochester than a Jane Eyre. Ann needed to know more.

"Cissa, is it? Yes, Cissa, dear," Ann began, "do you know why I've been brought here?"

The woman's face stayed pale as ever, but a darkness overshadowed it all the same. "HE must have wanted you."

Ann frowned. "He? The man lurking downstairs?"

"Yes."

"And he is not your husband?"

Cissa shuddered. "No, never."

Ann stepped closer to her. "Are you in danger here? Is he cruel to you?" Ann left unspoken the question of whether he meant to be cruel to her. It seemed implied.

Cissa covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking. "Cruel! Yesterday - with my boy - oh - CRUCIATUS."

She was weeping now - wailing. Ann closed an arm around her. "There, there," Ann called over her crying. "Whoever he is, whatever he wants, we're together now. We'll help each other get through - "

The door to the bedchamber slammed open, scuffing the wooden rail fixed to the wall to receive exactly that kind of impact, as if people had been bursting dramatically through doors here for a very long time. Another mad-looking woman had come into the room, dark-haired and screaming at the first one. "Cissie, will you shut up? I can hear you squawking from the entrance hall."

Cissa snarled at her. "Get out, Bella! You stood there and you did nothing - your own nephew - just a boy - and under an Unforgivable - "

"Oh, he's undamaged. And stop babying him, Cissie. He's nearly of age, and it was just to his legs," the woman snarled in return, remorseless about - whatever had happened to the nephew.

Ann stepped between them, speaking in a calm but warm voice. "Really, I think you had better leave, Madam," she dared say to Bellatrix Lestrange. "At least until Cissa has calmed down."

Bellatrix was drawing herself up to a dueling posture, reaching for her wand to teach the insolent Muggle how to grovel to her betters.

But then Ann said, "I'll see to her. You needn't trouble yourself. I'm here with her now."

There it was: the key to Bellatrix's freedom from serving as Narcissa's nursemaid. She tossed her head. "Yes, that's right, Muggle. Consider yourself her the lady-in-waiting to a once great witch of an ancient and noble family, and blessed to be so."

"I do, I do," Ann said, nodding and walking toward the most dangerous witch in Britain as if she was nothing more frightening than an overwrought dental patient, herding her out of the room as she went. "You can leave us to it. I'm sure you've got important business with HIM."

"That I have," Bellatrix snapped, and she slammed out of the room as violently as she'd come in.

"Your own nephew!" Cissa screamed after her.

Ann shook her head. "You heard her, Cissa. He's alright. It was terrible, I'm sure, but he must be strong and he's alright now."

Cissa wiped her nose on her sleeve. "You're very kind. They shouldn't have tossed you in here like they did. All they told me is that you're Muggle scum. I don't even know your name."

"I'm Ann," she said. "You're right that I'm not a magic person. But my daughter is. That must have something to do with why I'm here, but I cannot imagine what."

She was thinking out loud more than talking to Cissa. Clearly, she had been brought to a dangerous place by dangerous people. The magic here felt different than Hermione's. It was malevolent and explosive.

Ann knew these people considered normal folk beneath them. Hermione tried not to take on such notions herself, but her parents felt it anyway, particularly in her refusal to discuss the politics and problems of her magical society, as if it was too sophisticated or frightening for them. What Ann wouldn't give to know something about all of that now that she seemed to have been hauled into the thick of it. Hermione must be involved in something Ann's kidnappers were desperate to frustrate. Wasn't that Harry Potter friend of hers special is some way - some notorious way?

"You have a child of your own?" Cissa was asking.

Ann blinked. "Yes. A girl. Seventeen."

Cissa squeezed her hand in both of hers, patting it, and rocking back and forth, like they had suddenly come to understand each other.

There was at least one thing Ann did understand. If she was going to figure out what was happening in this house, if she was going to survive here, she would need some magic on her side. She would need the help and allegiance of the poor, magical wretch clinging to her hand. Before that could happen, there would be much to do.

"Cissa, my dear," she began, "let's draw you a bath."

* * *

Harry had reached the foot of the marble staircase when Hermione and Malfoy caught up to him. Hermione was still imploring him to listen to more talk about marrying Malfoy when Ron joined them, dragging Pansy along.

"Oh, what's this?" Harry interrupted Hermione, waving at Ron and Pansy. "Shall I go grab Ginny? Make it a proper sextet?"

Ron took an angry step closer to him. "Not if you know what's good for you."

"Ronald, it just means a group of six," Hermione said.

Pansy rolled her eyes. "He knows what it means."

Malfoy was fed up. "Look, Potter, I won't bother you with details about our feelings for one another, but you should know that he found out yesterday that the thing on my arm lets him hurt Hermione. Now that he knows, we don't have any more time for experiments or research. To keep her safe, we need to concentrate on perfecting the best solution we have. We need to do it."

"You're going to do it?" Ron stammered.

"Ultimately, yes," Hermione said. "Your Fat Friar told us to get married."

"Muffliato," Harry said, glaring at a pair of passing second years who had the audacity to use the stairs.

Ron was shaking his head, as if he'd been punched. "That sly old git. We never would have sent you to the Friar if we'd known - "

"Of course we would have," Pansy said. "Quit being so territorial and dense, Weasley. Respect her choice."

Ron turned to her. "But it's Malfoy."

Pansy hushed him, shaking her head. "Remember all of this for the first time my parents call you a blood-traitor to your face."

Hermione had resumed. "The matrimonial ritual will affect you, Harry, like when it hurt your head to see our charm activated in the hospital. The Friar was wrong about leaving you out of it. That's not possible."

Harry groaned, scrubbing his face with his hands. She was always right.

"But the good news is, it will hurt You-know-who worse, and while he's vulnerable and the connection between all of us is active, we may be able to attack him, weaken him, buy you and Dumbledore more time for what you have to do."

Harry sat down on the bottom step, his head in his hands. He'd cooperate - of course he would. Being the Chosen One forced so many of his choices. He would do it. But he would hate it.

A voice was calling from across the Entrance Hall, coming in fuzzy through the Muffliato spell before Harry ended it.

It was Professor McGonagall, walking quickly, waving toward them. "Miss Granger," she said. "In my office, at once."


	33. Chapter 33

"Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall said, billowing away from breakfast in the Great Hall, moving through the Entrance Hall, waving to where Hermione, Draco, Harry, Ron, and Pansy were gathered at the foot of the marble staircase. "In my office, at once."

Hermione took Draco's hand in both of hers. "She knows about the engagement."

He nodded. "Snape. It's Snape who would have told her, that's for certain."

"Here you go." Ron was nodding knowingly, unconcerned about the tone of relief in his voice. "McGonagall will be none too pleased with your news."

Harry sprung to his feet. "Maybe she'll have a better solution. Something where no kids end up married. Let's go."

Hermione held a hand to his chest. "Thanks, Harry. But you're not coming with us."

Harry fell slightly backward. "Us? You're taking him with you and leaving us here?"

Draco seemed as surprised as anyone. "You want me to come?"

"Of course I do. That's what this," she waved the ring in his face, "is supposed to be all about. Especially if she's going to argue with me about it."

Ron slapped Draco hard on the back. "Get in there, mate. It's your first husband duty, and probably not the one you were hoping for. See how you like it."

"Oh, go on, Draco," Pansy added. "It's not like you've never been told off by McGonagall before."

Ron dropped an arm around Pansy, gesturing with his chin toward McGonagall's office. "Yeah, you know by now that even with Slytherins, she's not so bad. Remember? It was her that rescued you from life as a ferret. Made sure to transfigure you back with your clothes on and everything."

Pansy muffled her laugh against Ron's chest.

"Pansy - don't encourage him," Draco said, betrayed. "You said you never thought it was funny."

"No, of course it wasn't funny. McGonagall wasn't laughing, at any rate," Ron went on, Pansy swatting at him.

Hermione was backing toward the office, hauling on Draco's arm. "Come along. She's waiting."

Harry took one aggressive step forward as they left. "You hear her out properly, Hermione. If she says you don't have to do this then - "

"Harry, trust me," she called back to him.

Professor McGonagall's door stood ajar and Hermione tapped a knock against it as she nudged it open.

"Miss Granger," McGonagall announced. "And Mr. Malfoy, of course."

"Yes, professor. You've spoken with Professor Snape, and heard of our plans?" Hermione began.

She took a breath so deep they could see and hear it from across the room. "I have…" She invited them to sit down as she proceeded to repeat back to them everything she understood from her meeting with Snape. "Is this how you understand these matters as well?" she finished.

Hermione nodded. "Yes. You've got it. There's no other way for us to stay safe, and to keep Draco's family safe, and to keep Death Eaters out of the school, and - "

Professor McGonagall shushed her. "No need to say it all aloud." She fingered her hat brim, almost nervously. "I feel it my duty to remind you that there are riskier courses of action we could take, alternate plans we could try as means of weathering the crises you now find yourselves in. You do have choices. I need to be sure both of you understand this. You are not as trapped as you may believe."

Hermione took Draco's hand. "We understand. We're not trapped. We've chosen this."

Draco squeezed Hermione's hand but would not meet McGonagall's eyes now that they were more like a tiger's than a tabby cat's.

She pursed her lips. "Do excuse me for saying so, Mr. Malfoy, but," she said, leaning subtly over her desk, each of her movements as understated and refined as each of Snape's would have been exaggerated, "Hermione dear, you have a brilliant future, and…" She searched for words to explain how devastated she was to see Hermione choosing a lifelong companion while so young - and from such a family.

McGonagall didn't need to say anything more. Draco sensed her meaning perfectly, his bowed head hanging even lower, stooping beneath the guilt of being the one to dim the brightest witch of their age.

But Hermione was finishing McGonagall's unspoken thought. "And now I have someone brilliant to share my future with," she said.

McGonagall was touched enough to manage a pained smile. "You do, don't you now," she allowed.

She rose from her desk and moved to Hermione's chair, raising her to her feet and embracing her. "All the best to you, you brave, brilliant young woman." She released her and patted Malfoy on the shoulder as she moved to take her place behind her desk once again.

"There are," she said, "some logistical issues arising from your choice which need sorting. First and foremost: contraception."

"Oh, yes. My mother gave me pills," Hermione was quick to say. "From a Muggle doctor. I've started them already."

McGonagall startled. "Already? You don't mean to say - the Mitrian purity clause, it's - "

Draco was shocked enough to speak. "No, no. Hermione, why - "

"What? They take some time before they begin to work, so I started them early," she explained. "No, Professor, everything is - intact."

McGonagall shook her head. "Well, you will meet with Madam Pomfrey to discuss proper magical contraception regardless of your family's Muggle medicines. They all come with margins of error."

"So do spells, Professor," Hermione said. "No, I'm afraid I gave my mother my word that I wouldn't - be with Draco - without taking the pills. So I must keep my word."

McGonagall sat back in her chair. "Excellent," she said. "Good to hear that you are taking precautions and it's also good to hear you standing up to my influence. It wouldn't do for a married woman to be too easily cowed by her school teacher. Speak up for your family, Hermione. But may I suggest that if you're not prepared to say the word 'sex' in front of me, you may not be prepared to engage in it - "

"Sex," Hermione blurted.

Draco covered his mouth, faking a cough, unsuccessfully stifling a laugh.

Hermione kicked his foot as she pulled her shoulders toward her ears. "Sorry, Professor."

McGonagall laughed quietly to herself. "No apologies, my dear. Next most," she went on, "is the issue of accommodations. After a thousand years of operation through all kinds of social milieux, it should not surprise you to learn that you will not be the first married couple to ever study at Hogwarts. But you will be the first here in almost two centuries, meaning we currently have no ready residences for married students."

"We won't need much room. And there's lots of space in the dungeons," Draco said.

"I am not living in that musty green pit."

"Musty? You've never even been inside. And I'm not moving into that lightning rod of a tower after making an attack on the Dark Lord."

"All house dormitories," Professor McGonagall interrupted, "are out of the question once you're married. However, there are disused quarters for married couples on the seventh floor. They are not well-known, as word of their existence raises a threat of needing to use them, at least among some of our more romantically minded students. However, we will refurbish a portion of them for your use, when the time comes."

She leaned toward Draco. "Which brings us to our third issue: the timing of the matrimonial charm ceremony. I advise you to settle on this date before the end of today, Mr. Malfoy. In fact, consider yourself excused from your morning classes to do so. For all we know, the best time might be right now, and for the sake of the safety and survival of everyone involved, we mustn't miss it."

He nodded. "Yes, Professor."

She replied with a nod of her own. "Now, the next issue is quite delicate. It is that of your families. Mr. Malfoy, Professor Snape tells me that your mother has signed her consent for your wedding to proceed, but your parents themselves remain indisposed and will not attend. Is that correct?"

He shifted painfully in his seat. "Yes, that's true."

"As it is regrettable," she said, kindly. "As for your family, Miss Granger, you do not require their consent but the question remains of how much or how little you will permit them to be involved in the wedding."

"Well," Hermione began, "they gave me the pills…"

"Which is a sign that they wish you to remain independent from Mr. Malfoy by not becoming mother to his children, not a sign that they approve of you becoming closer and linking your life to his."

Hermione nodded toward her lap. McGonagall was right. She sighed. "We've decided to wait to have a Muggle wedding until we're in our twenties. And for now, I think we can pass a wizard wedding off as fanciful and irrelevant enough that my parents won't take it too seriously."

McGonagall frowned. "And you think having a marriage your parents don't take seriously will help you strengthen yourselves as a family - a family embroiled in a developing war and badly in need of support?"

Hermione sighed louder than ever. "I don't know, Professor."

She clucked her tongue. "I will invite the Drs. Granger to have dinner here in the castle tonight, with both of you, myself, and Professor Snape. You may dismiss Professor Snape and me whenever you like, and you may tell your parents as much or as little about the situation as you see fit. But I feel your parents must have the opportunity to speak with you before you proceed, whether they fully understand what's coming or not."

Draco's hand was suddenly sweaty in Hermione's grip, and his complexion had turned slightly green, but Hermione bowed her head and nodded. "Yes, Professor."

"It's a good thing you've agreed," McGonagall said. "I've already begun trying to reach them, but without success. They haven't gone on holiday, have they?"

Hermione blinked. "No. They've only just returned from Christmas vacation. They'll be at the surgery."

McGonagall fingered the brim of her hat again. "I get no response there this morning. Blasted telephone machines. Not to worry, Miss Granger. I'll fetch them from London myself."

Suddenly, she seemed to be dismissing them, standing up and rounding her desk. Hermione and Draco stood with her, Hermione chattering quickly as she saw their time ending. "Professor, what about Harry? He's involved in the charm too, and in a dangerous way. How is he going to - "

"Leave that," McGonagall interrupted, "to the headmaster himself. Now off to class with you, Miss Granger. And to Snape's study with you, Mr. Malfoy."

She stood in the doorway of her office, watching until they went their separate ways.

* * *

Narcissa Black Malfoy was eerily comfortable with being bathed by someone else. Luckily for Ann Granger, a long career maintaining strangers' teeth meant she didn't find other people's wet bodies repulsive. Narcissa sat in a great, porcelain tub filled with water that somehow never cooled off and bubbles that never dissipated, almost modestly covered as Ann worked her hair into a foamy lather, easing out the snags and tangles.

As Ann worked, Narcissa told her - completely without the social filters and she would have had if she wasn't mildly mad - the entire history of the latest British wizarding war and the new uprising of the Death Eater movement.

Ann followed the snarled threads of the story as best she could. When Narcissa seemed to have finished, Ann gave a long, loud hum. "Well, whatever your people may have right, their PR machine is all wrong, isn't it?"

Narcissa turned over to read Ann's face, slippery as a white fish submerged in the bathwater. "A wot?"

"PR - you know. Their image is a bit fearsome, don't you think? I mean, I do enjoy my Tim when he's manly and forceful and all, but if he took to hounding people and calling himself a Death Eater - sends a rather grim message, doesn't it? Makes him sound less than heroic - more like a villain."

Narcissa blinked the water out of her eyes. "My Lucius is only trying to preserve our way of life. Our kind are a minority in this country - in this world. We're dying out. If we want a future for our son, then we need to, we have to..."

Remembering her son, her voice trailed off. Ann saw she didn't need to remind her of how these noble friends of her husband's had recently treated their son - or at least his legs. Instead, Ann took Narcissa by the shoulders, turning her around so she could rinse the suds from her hair before they crept any further down her forehead to sting Narcissa's eyes.

"I'm not sure you are dying out, Cissa dear," she said as she tipped a pitcher of warm, clear water over Narcissa's hair. "Why, look at Tim and me. Both of us are from families where magic is completely unheard of, and yet we managed to produce a witch as a daughter, in the usual non-magical way. And if our girl's accomplishments are any indication, she's a fine one too - the best in her class at school, good and better than any child raised in a magical family. If that can happen spontaneously to people like us, I don't see why the rest of you need to be bothered about survival. Now out you come. Look at your lovely skin. It gets prune-y in bathwater, just like mine would."

Snug in her dressing gown, Narcissa was absently reaching for the dirty dress she'd been wearing for days, when Ann insisted she wear something fresh. Her closet was vast and appeared to be full of nothing but lavish gowns. Narcissa blinked as she stepped inside, running her hands over the lush fabrics as if she was remembering something.

Ann stood behind her, puzzling over the racks. "You don't have anything comfortable to lounge about in?" Ann asked.

Narcissa blinked again. "What do you mean? These are the finest gowns, expertly made. Nothing could be more comfortable."

Ann laughed, but not unkindly. "Then you'd better choose one yourself. I don't know where to begin."

Narcissa had already begun to choose something. "I'll get one for you too, Ann darling. If you don't mind me saying," she said, "I simply cannot bear to see you dressed like a house elf any longer."

"A wot?"

"A house elf - nevermind, Ann. You won't have noticed them. Now wear this."

Ann stood looking at her reflection in the tall mirror in Narcissa's closet. She was dressed in the most ornate article of clothing she had ever worn, which fit her perfectly, somehow, even though she was a full two inches taller than Narcissa. It was indeed comfortable but left her feeling like she was dressed for a wedding. She thought of the man lurking on the main floor - the one Cissa called the Dark Lord - and hoped to god she was not. It was time to make another move toward protecting herself.

"Cissa," she began again, "have you got one of those - you know - those sticks, the magic wands, like my daughter and the men who brought me here use?"

Every time Narcissa answered a question with a blink, it was as if she woke up from her mad stupor a little more. She blinked again now. "My wand," she said. "Yes, of course I have one. But I can't remember the last time I saw it."

"Well let's have a look," Ann said, pulling up the pillows on the bed.

"Accio wand," Narcissa said instead. A thin, dark stick fastened to a pearly handle came flying from beneath an overstuffed chaise, settling effortlessly into the palm of her hand. As the wood contacted her skin, she drew in a quick breath, her lips parted, her eyes rolling back, before she straightened her shoulders and folded her hands over the handle of the wand.

Ann uttered a high, pleasantly surprised sound. "Well, that's one way to find things. That's the first of your spells I actually envy."

Narcissa smiled, but it was an expression different from those Ann had seen from her thus far. Her chin was higher, her mouth tighter, her eyes less open and wild, more hooded and guarded. Her Bertha Rochester demeanor was abating, and she was looking more truly like the lady of this manor. Ann didn't know whether to feel more hopeful or more afraid.

"Thank you, Ann," Narcissa said. "For all your help this morning. I'm feeling ever so much better."

"My thanks to you as well," Ann answered. "I must say Cissa, I'm not happy to have been brought here, especially now that I know for sure how little the man downstairs thinks of my kind. If I didn't have you here with me, this whole thing might be unbearably nightmarish." She glanced at Narcissa's new, somewhat haughty face. "I reckon it may yet be."

Narcissa slid her wand into a pocket in his skirts. "I wish I could promise you otherwise," she said. "But the situation here has gone out of my hands." She looked about the room, her mind working more quickly and slickly every moment. "Let's occupy our time as pleasantly as we can before they send for you, shall we Ann?"

She nodded. There seemed to be nothing more she could do.

"Your daughter," Narcissa began, "she's currently the best student in sixth year at Hogwarts, you say."

Ann smiled. "Yes. This year and every year. She's extremely clever."

Narcissa had strolled across the room, coming to stand over a vanity. She turned her back to Ann, lifting a quill from the tabletop - a rough black quill conjured by Severus Snape when he was last in this room, admonishing her to sign her consent to let her son be married under-aged. "And what do you call your clever girl?"

Ann laughed gently. "Everyone says it's an odd name. I've never thought so. No one from your world has ever said so either. Maybe being seized with a fit to give her a name like that should have been the first sign to me that she would come to belong more in your world than in mine. We call her Hermione."

Narcissa turned to face her, tapping the plume of Snape's quill against the palm of her hand. "My son is also in sixth year at Hogwarts. He is second in the class and heir to all of this - to all of Malfoy Manor."

Ann blinked. "Malfoy Manor," she said. Dieter Mandrake, Declan Malfort, Drago Malcolm - her breath hitched. "Draco Malfoy."

"Draco Malfoy," Narcissa echoed. "My only son, your son-in-law."

* * *

After her morning classes, Hermione came running into the Entrance Hall, racing down the stairs to Snape's study. The door was open and Draco stood over a large potion-mixing table that was covered with unfurled star charts, scratching away on a parchment, his back facing the door.

She skipped across the floor, hopping onto his back, kissing his cheek. "So?" she asked as he gasped and caught hold of her legs by the backs of her knees. "So when is our ceremony? How long do we have?"

"Have a look," he said, setting her down. "It's either here, which is the same week term ends - death week. Or it's here." He pointed to a sector of the chart right in front of himself.

He watched her as she leaned over him to read the point next to his finger. "There? Draco, that's - that's the end of this week."

He bent to whisper in her ear. "Yes."

"That's so soon."

"Yes, McGonagall said it might be." He was turning from the table, closing his arms around her, moving his hands along her back, his fingertips in the groove of her spine, moving from her waist into her hair, everywhere. "Are you ready?"

She rose onto her tiptoes. "Yes."

He pressed his cheek against hers. "For all of it?"

She tipped back to nip his bottom lip with hers, laughing. "You heard me say 'sex' in front of McGonagall. I passed the test."

He sighed, his voice sounding through it, making it more like a moan. "By the stars, Hermione," he said as best he could with her mouth playing over his. "By this Sunday night, we'll - "

"But not yet," a stern voice called from the back entrance of the office. It was Snape himself, returning from his morning classes. "Enough of that. Mr. Malfoy, report to Professor Firenze to check your work."

"Yes, sir."

Hermione was nodding, following Draco out. "Excuse us, sir."

They dashed out the door, where Draco hoisted her onto his back again, carrying her away, up the stairs.


	34. Chapter 34

**AN: What a time this is. A billion thanks to everyone still commenting. I love these chapters after they're written, but getting into the frame of mind to write them is harder than ever right now. You keep me going when it would be easier to stop and I thank you, from my shut in little heart. Wishing health and safety to all of you. DDD**

Clearly, Narcissa Malfoy was still a madwoman.

That's what Ann Granger assumed when Narcissa introduced the name of her son into their conversation, calling him Ann's son-in-law.

Ann laughed, waving the remark away. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Cissa. Hermione's only just told me they're seeing each other. It is harrowing to see them getting close so young. But I think we may be able to weather a school romance without having to resort to a wedding."

She took a step toward Narcissa, one hand shielding the side of her mouth as she spoke, as if to keep anyone from overhearing. "Don't be too scandalized, Cissa, but before I sent her back to school, I took Hermione to the doctor to get a prescription for the pill."

Narcissa's brow furrowed. "Pill?"

Ann raised her eyebrows. "Oh, your people - no, of course you wouldn't. Magic, after all. I see. The pill, Cissa, it's medicine to keep the kids from - well, from getting in a family way."

Narcissa was still frowning, shaking her head.

Ann tried again. "To keep him from getting her up the duff."

Narcissa shrugged, still confused. "Sorry, Ann. I don't - "

"Pregnant," Ann burst. "Medicine to keep your son from getting my daughter pregnant, so no matter what happens, they won't feel like they have to get married as teenagers."

Narcissa cringed. "Ann - no, my dear. I don't mean son-in-law because of a baby, I mean the letter Draco brought here pleading with me to sign it. He risked his life to press the issue with me. It disturbed this entire household and led to him being tortured with a Cruciatus curse. How could I not sign it?"

Ann stepped forward to take both of Narcissa's hands, meeting her eyes, imploring. "What letter? What was it?"

"The letter of consent for him to marry," Narcissa finished, looking away. "Draco is not yet seventeen and needed my permission - or at least, for me not to forbid it."

Ann let go of Narcissa's hands, stepping back, and forcing another more desperate laugh. "Your son wanted a letter to marry my daughter, at age sixteen? Why in the world would he want such a thing? They're in school. They're young and free and - and I got them the pill. There's no excuse..."

Narcissa crept across the floor, leaned her ear against the door to see if she could hear anyone spying on them from outside. "Quiet the room," she said, sternly and clearly, as if she was speaking to the house itself.

"Now, Ann," she began, and she told her what she knew about the love charm she'd seen the Dark Lord try to cast out of Draco's arm before he branded him with the Dark Mark.

"I can't tell you exactly what it was," she said, helpless in Ann's barrage of new questions. "It's not that I don't think you'd understand because you're not magical. It's not that at all, Ann. It's just that I truly don't have a grasp of it myself. When the charm came apart in my drawing room, flying into hundreds of tiny, starry lights, one sank into my heart. I could feel something of what your Hermione feels for my son, Ann. I know their connection is more than infatuation. I hope you can find some comfort in that."

Ann was pacing the floor. "I do not," she said. "They can be as madly in love as they want. I was seventeen once myself and - well, they may very well be in love. But what's that got to do with getting married at this age?"

Narcissa was nodding, her eyes fixed on her hands folded at her middle. "I ought to tell you, we tend to marry young in wizarding Britain," she said. "I myself was engaged to Lucius shortly after I left school. An eighteen-year-old bride, a mother at twenty. There were many young brides that year. It was the beginning of a war - something like now."

"A war?" Ann repeated. "Cissa, you called your husband's people a movement."

Narcissa sighed. "Yes, a militant movement - revolution, insurrection. The Dark Lord downstairs - he's made my Draco into a soldier but it's all just a pretense to punish Lucius for the times we've disappointed him."

Narcissa beat her fists once against her thighs. "I've fought to save Draco myself but - I'm no warrior. Not like this. But Hermione has found a way. She is fighting to save his life. This charm between them is the key to that. I don't understand it but ever since the Dark Lord touched it, he's been ill and rabid to get rid of it. It has power over him somehow. All I know is that Draco and Hermione's bond needs to be strengthened in order for them to escape and survive - in order for all of us to survive: the children and Lucius, me, and - and you, Ann. You and your Tim as well."

She paused, catching her breath. "And so we have arrived here."

Ann cast her eyes around the room, held her arms in front of herself, scanning the lengths of them, clad in Narcissa's hand-tatted lace sleeves. "Arrived here," she repeated. "Here with the man downstairs, the monster no one has ever wounded but that Harry Potter character and my own daughter."

Narcissa nodded. "So it is."

Ann waved an arm toward the door. "He's brought me here as a hostage, hasn't he? He's using me to hurt her. He's going to hurt me in order to hurt and control Hermione."

Narcissa nodded. "I've come to that conclusion as well. I'm so sorry, Ann."

Ann stomped toward the bedroom door, calling through the wood. "If he's so bloodthirsty, why hasn't he come for me yet? What is he waiting for? Why is he letting me work it all out, here alone with you?"

Narcissa took her hand again, leading her away from the door. "He is still powerful but thanks to his wounds, he is slow and sick. He thinks none of us can tell, but it's plain to see. I've known him for a very long time, long enough to know that even at the height of his powers, he would attempt very little during the day, while the sun shines on him."

Ann gave a sad smirk. "Vampire."

Narcissa hugged herself. "Much worse than that. As for leaving you shut in here with me, it was supposed to make it easier for Bella to guard us and keep us from annoying him. Though she seems to have given it up. As for me, it's been weeks since they dismissed me as mad. They don't believe I'll be able to tell you anything useful. And since you're a Muggle, they believe you're completely helpless, as if there's nothing you could do to affect your situation. You're a mouse in their trap."

"I'm the bait in their trap," Ann sighed, sitting heavily on the bed. "But he will come for me, won't he? When the day darkens, he'll come. He'll let Hermione know I'm here and demand that she give herself up in my place. And she'll come."

Ann folded her arms across her aching middle. "And even if I were to drown myself in your bathtub to spoil their bait and keep my girl alive, he'd just bring Tim here and do the same with him." Her head fell into her hands. "Cissa, my whole family - what do I do?"

Narcissa dropped to her knees at Ann's feet, speaking up into her face in a fierce whisper. "You save them," she said. "We save them."

Ann's hands came away from her face, looking into Narcissa's. Her eyes were wild again, but not with madness.

She took Ann's hand and raised her to her feet. "No one here knows I'm in my right mind. They don't know I've got my wand. The house hid it from them while I was ill. What's more, they may have forgotten that, even though this house doesn't let them apparate in and out, as its mistress, the house lets me come and go as I please."

Ann blinked in recognition. "Apparate. That's the," she snapped her fingers, not knowing how else to talk about it. "The kids are preparing to take their tests."

"Yes, that's right," Narcissa said. "You won't like apparation, I'm afraid. But it's your only chance to get from here to Hogwarts. You must go there. It's one of the few safe places left in Britain."

"Right. How is it done?"

Narcissa extended her arm. "Take my hand. No, it'll still be too much for you." She held Ann around the waist instead. "Bow your face into my shoulder. It will help with the spinning. And remember to breathe. Ready, steady…"

Wand out, Narcissa turned both of them on the spot, like dancers in the Epicruvean waltz, Ann holding onto her tightly, choking as the spinning took them. Then they were stumbling on the road from Hogsmeade, fresh, cold air chilling them as they landed almost at the gates of Hogwarts.

Ann sank to the ground, hands on her head, panting in the frosty grass. She swore.

"Sorry, Ann. I was as gentle as I could be. Can you get up?" She tugged on Ann's hand, helping her fight to standing. "Do you recognize the place? Around this bend is the gate to the school. There are Aurors there all the time now - police, that is. Tell them who you are and that you need to speak with your daughter. They'll help."

"Cissa!" Ann called, laying a hand on Narcissa's wand as she was about to turn and leave. "You've got to come with me. You can't go back to that house, especially after I've gone missing. They'll punish you, like they did Draco. Your legs - the crusty attic curse." She struck her most authoritative, motherly tone. "Cissa, come with me to the school."

Narcissa shook her head. "I can't Ann. He has ways of forcing Draco to come to him. And if I'm gone, he will certainly bring my boy to answer for it. No, I'll go back and feign madness again. I'll tease the knots back into my hair and dress myself in that same filthy gown. I'll hide my wand away. Perhaps they won't blame me. But if they do - well, for some time now, it ought to have been my turn to face the anger of the Dark Lord."

A moment of silence passed between them before Ann lunged forward to throw her arms around Narcissa's neck, pecking her cheek, speaking into her ear. "Thank you, Cissa. For my whole family, for everything - thank you."

Narcissa squeezed her ribs, sniffing at tears. "Take care, Ann. Perhaps we'll meet again, as family."

* * *

It was mid-afternoon, the streets deserted, when Tim Granger parked his car outside his house, fumbling for his keys, rushing to the front door, an ember of hope burning in his chest, telling him it was possible that Ann might have come home while he was gone.

He pushed through the door, calling out. "Ann?"

She didn't answer, but just inside, perched stiffly on the little bench no one ever sat on in the Granger's front hall, was a tall figure in a pointed hat. At the sight of Tim, she stood up, looking him over - his eyes red, face unshaven, his hair bushier and more unruly than ever, as if it had dried wet before he could comb it.

He jumped. "Professor McGonagall! You've come. Do you have her?" he said, taking a giant step toward her. "Ann - do you have Ann with you?"

McGonagall's eyes grew wide. "Dr. Granger, is everything alright? When I saw the sign fixed to the door of your surgery announcing you were closed for a family emergency, I feared the worst."

He grit his teeth. "As do I, Professor." He paced in the hall as he explained how Ann had gone downstairs to get the paper and put the kettle on this morning and he hadn't seen her since.

"I've been up and down the street, knocking on doors. No one in the neighbourhood has seen her. She wasn't here to open the surgery this morning. Her family doesn't know anything. I even filed a report with the police."

McGonagall's posture was getting straighter as she grew more and more alarmed.

Tim stopped pacing, turning a desperately hopeful face to her. "I hadn't thought of you people though. She might very well have made her way to Hermione at the school. Why not? Ann and I are not like the rest of you, but we can visit our child's school whenever we want to, can't we? Has she…"

His voice trailed off, as if he couldn't bring himself to hear McGonagall tell him Ann hadn't come to the school, and that meant he couldn't bring himself to finish asking. Why wouldn't she give him a smile, or at least do something other than purse her lips and frown?

"Dr. Granger," she said. "You must come with me to Hogwarts, at once. I'm not sure how much Hermione has told you, but for some months now there has been trouble among - our people. Some of the students have been involved - "

Tim's gaze drifted off, remembering. "Last summer, when Hermione came home with cracked ribs…"

McGonagall nodded. "I'm afraid things are degenerating quickly, to the point where you and Dr. Mrs. Granger might be caught up in it."

Tim blanched. "Degenerating - what kind of trouble?"

"I don't know for certain."

"Is Ann in danger? Is Hermione safe?"

McGongall took another one of her immense breaths. "Hermione is safe at school. That I know. As for your wife - well, if she is threatened by anyone from our world, our best chance to help her is to meet with Professor Dumbledore at the school. Come now, Dr. Granger, the sooner we're off, the better. Take my arm..."

* * *

Hermione stood with their star chart rolled up in her fist, tapping her foot in front of the closed door of Professor McGonagall's office. "Where is she?" Hermione asked Draco. "She told us to inform her immediately when we worked out when the ceremony will be. Come on, McGonagall. There isn't much time."

Draco was sitting on a hard wooden bench thumbing through the lessons he'd missed that morning. "Come sit down, Granger. She'll be off getting ready for dinner with your parents, like she told us," he said, shuddering a little at the thought of the impending meeting. "Come tell me whether you're going to tell them everything or not."

She sat beside him, lying back to rest her head on his knees, looking up at the vaulted ceiling. "I don't know, Draco. Didn't McGonagall tell us to follow our feelings when we see them? It's the opposite of deciding beforehand, isn't it?"

Draco hummed, setting down his book and tracing along the smooth skin of her nose, brow, and jawlines with his fingers. "Follow our feelings? If I'm honest, my feelings are terrified and telling me to disappear for the evening."

She caught his hand in hers. "You wouldn't dare."

He sighed, combing the fingers of his free hand through the hair at her temple, flowing behind her ear. "No, of course I wouldn't. But when will it stop, Hermione? When will all the awful things about being engaged be finished so we can settle into…"

"Into what?" she asked when he didn't finish, nestling the back of her head a little higher on his legs, smiling archly at him. "Into our new quarters on the seventh floor? You and me, together all day and night? Never going home, because we're already home?"

She laughed, coy as he faltered in the slow, rhythmic stroking of her hair. He grinned back at her, and bent to brush his nose against hers. "Will they give us a honeymoon?" he mused. "Even if it's just here in the castle? Or will they expect us to report to class as usual, just a few hours after…"

"With everyone looking at us, knowing we've been…" She turned her face, as if already embarrassed, hiding against his thigh.

He smirked, squirming slightly as her breath passed through the light fabric of his trouser-leg, warm on his skin. "Courage, my girl. Now for the love of the Mitrian monks, sit up."

They were sitting side by side, looking at tomorrow's potion assignment, still waiting for McGonagall when, across the Entrance Hall, a strange figure came into view. It was a person - not a student, not a teacher, not close enough to see clearly, yet she was somehow familiar to Hermione all the same.

Hermione stood to see her better. Overdressed in an ornate gown like a pureblood, aristocratic lady, the visitor looked lost, perhaps scared.

Into the vast empty space, the visitor called out, "Hello?"

Hermione gasped. "Mum?"

"Hermione!"

They ran to each other across the stone floor, Ann catching Hermione's face in both her hands. "Hermione, darling, you're safe?"

"Yes, of course, Mum. What are you doing here?" She spoke the rest into Ann's shoulder as she crushed her in a hug. "And what on earth are you wearing?"

Behind her, Draco was standing up, approaching carefully, saying quietly, as if to himself. "It's - I think it's my mother's."

Ann nearly shoved Hermione out of her hug, clearing a path between herself and Draco. She announced his name. "Draco Malfoy."

He made a slight bow. "Madam Granger."

Hermione winced. "It's Doctor, actually." She took her mother's arm, trying to disrupt the intensity with which she was glaring at Draco. "Mum, what's going on? Where is Dad?"

Ann looked to where Hermione held her, snatching at the hand closed on her arm. It was her left hand, where Hermione wore her platinum engagement ring. Ann waved it between them. "When were you going to tell me about this?"

"Tonight, Mum," Hermione said, flicking a panicked glance at Draco. "Professor McGonagall went to London to bring you here so we could talk about it. There's so much to explain - "

"London?" Ann interrupted, her hand pressed to her sternum. "McGonagall's gone to London? She'll get your father then. Oh - Tim - thank heavens."

Hermione frowned. "Don't tell me you came from London without them. How is that possible?"

"She didn't come from London," Draco said. "Excuse me, Dr. Granger, but I can tell you've come from our house."

Ann was jarred out of her momentary relief that Tim might be on his way to the school. "Yes, that's it precisely. Some thugs picked me up out of our garden - Death Eaters, or some nonsense - and they hauled me off the Malfoy Manor."

Hermione gaped at her. "You were captured by Death Eaters? Today?"

"And they," Draco stammered, "they dressed you up in one of my mother's favourite gowns?"

Ann looked down at herself. "No, Cissa did this herself. I could have done without it but I couldn't have done without her magicking me out of there before that monster man woke up to interrogate me about my daughter's love life."

Hermione was clinging to her mother's hand. "Mum, I'm sorry. I never meant to - "

"Mother rescued you?" Draco interrupted, his face flushed red. "She couldn't have. For months now, she's been..." He couldn't finish.

Ann's face changed, staring at Narcissa's son. The sadness in his eyes was the same as his mother's - the stormy grey. With the sadness now was a fleeting but genuine look of relief. In telling him what his mother had done that morning, Ann had borne him an incredible gift, and he stood in front of her now, reeling in its power.

"Yes," she went on. "Your mother was brilliant and brave. Her mind was much disordered when first we met, but we cared for each other and before long she was well enough to get me to safety. I asked her to stay here with us, but she said you'd only be safe if she went back. She went back to them for you, Draco."

His eyes were glassy with unshed tears. He looked from Ann, to Hermione, then down at his feet.

Ann hesitated, considering the top of his bowed, white head. If she were to touch his hair, it would feel just like Cissa's had between her fingers that morning. Her heart cracked open. "Oh, go on," Ann said, springing across the floor to take him in her arms. "There, there, son. It's alright."


	35. Chapter 35

Tim Granger's face was still a bit green when he stepped into Hogwarts' Entrance Hall after apparating to the school gates with Minerva McGonagall. Unlike Narcissa Malfoy, McGonagall hadn't offered to let her Muggle side-along apparation partner bury his face in her shoulder and hold her tightly as they went. No, theirs had been a quick and professional trip, followed by a brisk walk to the castle to help him clear his head. Now, he found himself within the museum-smelling walls of the school, still faintly dizzy, following Professor McGonagall across the stone tiles toward her study.

She stopped abruptly in front of him. "Well, here is some good news, Dr. Granger," she said. "Look there."

Across the hall, Tim saw his own Hermione standing up from a bench where she'd been sitting with that fair-haired wizard boyfriend from the train station - the one who had spooked Ann enough for her to take Hermione to the doctor for a prescription. Pleased as he was to see Hermione, Tim couldn't help but cringe at the sight of the boy. Beside Hermione, he was standing up quickly - guiltily, Tim thought - nodding a greeting.

Tim returned the nod with cold, automatic politeness. Boy - he may still have had a tender prettiness about him, but he was too tall, too tired-looking, and too close to Tim's daughter for him to believe the harmless label of 'boy' could still suit him.

Tim looked away, to the figure seated on the other side of Hermione, sailing toward him dressed not in a school uniform but in some kind of ostentatious witch costume with which she seemed to be struggling. She was hitching up the skirts, shouting across the open space before anyone else could say anything, calling his name.

Tim squinted at her. "Ann?"

"Yes, darling," she said, close enough for him to see her clearly now, dropping the hem of the skirts to grab him, kissing him on both his cheeks and then his mouth, sighing loudly in relief. "Thank heavens they've brought you. You're safe."

"Ann." He was laughing his relief into her ear. "My darling Ann. Yes, I'm fine. But I nearly died of fright this morning when I couldn't find you. You've been here with Hermione the whole time."

She loosened her hold on his neck, hushing his laughter. "No, Tim. Not at all."

Professor McGonagall had spread both of her arms, smiling as she herded the lot of them toward her office. "Drs. Granger, if you please, we'd better have a private word."

* * *

"It's just a wizard ceremony," Hermione was rushing to say, after she and her mother and Professor McGonagall finished explaining their complicated situation to Tim as best they could, complete with the shocking news that his daughter was about to get married at the age of seventeen to a boy he had barely met. "It's under wizard law only, unless we register it with the government. There's no need to acknowledge it in Mu-, in normal society."

Tim lifted his head from where he'd dropped it into his hands, waving an arm toward Draco who'd taken a seat with the rest of them in McGonagall's parlor but had not yet spoken a word. "And he's satisfied to leave it unacknowledged, is he? He's satisfied with you playing as his wife here and then setting all commitment to him aside as soon as you come home for the holidays, or graduate, or simply get fed up with this lunacy and walk away? What kind of man - "

"Daddy, no. I never said I wouldn't acknowledge it myself, just that - "

"Now, Hermione - " Ann interrupted, glaring at her daughter with her I-told-you-to-let-me-handle-your-father look.

But since Tim had addressed his rhetorical questions to Draco, it was Draco himself who came forward to answer them.

"No, I am not satisfied with that," he said. "I'll be Hermione's husband no matter where she goes, or who's society she's in, or who acknowledges it, for the rest of her life. She'll be everything to me, and everywhere, always."

Tim rounded on him, looking him in the eyes for the first time. "Oh, I don't doubt you're keen right now," he said. "But I've been a seventeen-years-old male myself, you know. In the 1970s, no less. I know exactly what you're keen for. Don't sit here wide-eyed, trying to tell me about teenaged boys' deep and abiding interest in commitment."

Draco dropped his eyes but said, "Hermione only phrased it that way because she was trying to make you feel like she isn't trapped, so it doesn't upset you, because she loves you and can see you're unhappy."

Tim shook his head, clearing Draco's voice from his ears. "This is why you chose a girl with roots outside your own family's society isn't it? This is why you chose a - what's that stupid thing you call us - a Muggle, the daughter of Muggles. With a Muggle's daughter you could have the best of both worlds."

It hit hard - Tim's accidental but accurate calling out of the Malfoy family prejudice against Muggles, their centuries of thinking of them as inferior, not truly loveable, expendable. Draco recoiled from it, disgusted and implicated at the same time, all of the conflicts between who he had been and who he now was converging in one horrible moment, there in front of the people he most wanted to think well of him.

"Dad, no," Hermione was saying.

Draco drew himself up, out of his guilt and self-loathing, and answered Dr. Granger. "Let me assure you, sir I won't ever be alright with letting go of her. I will never do it."

Hermione made a noise like a growl. "No one will be letting me go," she said. "I belong to all three of you - and to Draco's parents too. If it hadn't been for Madam Malfoy today - ah, Mum, I can hardly bear to think of it."

Tim was suddenly sitting straighter, as if waking up. "Malfoy - that name - that's the same smug prat Arthur Weasley got to rowing with after a few drinks, in a bookstore in Diagon Alley at the start of your second year, isn't it?" Time raised his finger at Draco. "And you were the sneering towheaded boy at his elbow, weren't you?"

Hermione was veering in front of her father's finger. "That was a long time ago, Daddy. Draco was a child trying his very best to be a good son."

"Well, where is your father in all this?" Tim demanded, speaking to Draco over the top of Hermione's head. "They tell me your mother has been heroic and noble. Why does she have to do it on her own?"

"Tim, really," Ann said.

"He's in prison," Draco blurted. "He did something wicked in the service of the Dark Lord and he's been put away for it."

Tim threw up both his hands, looking bug-eyed to Ann. "Better and better," was all he said.

Hermione sank to her knees on the floor in front of her father, her hands covering the toes of his black leather shoes. "Daddy, by wizarding law, I don't need your permission to do this. And by tradition, I don't need you to walk me down an aisle and give me away. That's patriarchal Muggle nonsense and you know it."

Behind her, Ann managed a slight smirk.

As she spoke, Draco slid out of his chair, crossing the floor on his knees to kneel beside her at Tim's feet. Hermione sensed him there and let go of her father's shoes, linking her arm through Draco's without taking her eyes from her father's.

"I don't need you to be part of this, Daddy. And eventually," her voice broke, "in time, I will learn to be something like happy even if you aren't a part of us. But please don't do that, Daddy. Please don't…" She bowed her head, crying now.

Draco let out his breath, turned toward her, pressed his chin to the back of her head.

Ann was advancing too, stepping past them to come to Tim's side, reaching for his hand, laying her other hand on his shoulder. "Tim, darling," was all she said.

She had already described to him the shock of meeting masked Death Eaters in their garden, Bellatrix Lestrange's murderous sneer, the dark malevolence of the unseen man in Malfoy Manor, Cissa's madness and fear. But without experiencing any of it for himself, it all seemed fanciful and far away to Tim. Keeping him distant from it was what she had wanted when she pulled her front door closed behind herself that morning, but now it was complicating the way forward.

Tim stood up, patting Ann's hand. "I'm sorry, everyone," he said. "I'm going to need a little time to myself." He nodded at Professor McGonagall. "Excuse me."

* * *

While Tim Granger took his solitary walk, Professor McGonagall took Ann upstairs to the disused married quarters on the seventh floor. She had already set the elves to cleaning them up and furnishing them properly for Draco and Hermione to use, but now they would go to the Grangers, a comfortable place to keep them safe for however long they needed sanctuary from Voldemort.

"The colour scheme is odd," Ann said, touring through the small suite after McGonagall left her and Hermione alone. "Red and green, as if it's Christmas in here."

Draco had left with McGonagall to show her the star chart he'd mapped from Snape's un-cyphered books on the Mitrian charms. She seemed somewhat relieved when he told her the matrimonial charm ceremony would need to happen in a matter of days.

"And the incantation, has Hermione written it yet?" she asked.

"No, there hasn't been time," he said. "Her parents - they've been very distracting today."

"Perhaps I'll send Professor Snape to explain to them the demands on her time," she mused.

Draco winced.

"Or perhaps not," she said. "And Mr. Malfoy, you were badly injured earlier this week. I do advise you to remember that. Now go to your dormitory to rest."

She didn't even know about the Cruciatus curse he'd suffered at home this week, along with everything else. He nodded and agreed to go to bed.

But as he stepped out of her office, the slanting late afternoon light coming through the high windows in the stairwell caught his eye. Hermione was upstairs, and he hadn't had a chance to speak to her since the difficult meetings with her parents. The encounters had left him wounded, and he knew he wouldn't be able to rest until he saw her.

Draco had not quite stepped into the beam of sunlight on the staircase when he heard a voice across the Entrance Hall. "Crookshanks - Crooksy is that you, old boy?"

Draco slipped back into the shadows, conjuring a disillusionment spell as Tim Granger followed Crookshanks out of a corridor and into the hall.

"Does your mistress know you're out and about?" Tim asked the cat.

Crookshanks meowed, rubbing his back against Tim's shins. "Well, we should take you back. Seventh floor, they said." He stooped to gather Crookshanks in his arms but the cat darted away, stopping halfway up the first flight of stairs, turning back to meow peevishly, demanding to be followed.

"You'd rather walk up yourself? Well, of course you would, wouldn't you Crookshanks. Alright then."

Crookshanks led Tim upstairs. Draco flipped his hood over his head for good measure, and trailed behind them as soundlessly as he could.

Tim kept up his prattle with the cat. "She's got another boy in her life, you know," Tim said. "There's you, me, and now him. How do you like that?"

He grew quiet as students passed him, making their way down to the Great Hall for supper, looking askance at him, a middle-aged dentist wandering after a cat through Hogwarts.

"Oi, cat," Tim exclaimed when Crookshanks trotted purposefully out of the stairwell and into a fourth floor corridor. "It's this way. Come, Crookshanks, don't make me pick you up like some common housecat."

He followed the brushy orange tail further into a corridor hung with portraits, all of them moving in a way that gave him a sense of commotion and unease. "Crookshanks, come," he called in a whisper down the corridor, hanging back from walking along it any farther. The air was cold and electrified, as if it was - no, that couldn't be right. But yes, as if it was haunted.

Behind him, hooded in the shadows, coiled in his spell, Draco waited and watched. This was the Fat Friar's corridor, where his portrait had hung for hundreds of years. If the ghost appeared now, would Tim Granger, a Muggle, be able to see it? Watching his slow, cautious steps, Draco was fairly sure Tim could sense it whether he could see it or not.

"Come along, cat," he said.

There was a gust of wind and a flash of dim white light, like a mist settling in the centre of the corridor. With it came a great blustering, like someone clearing his throat with far too much fanfare, as if he was about to pronounce something binding and official.

There he was, the Fat Friar, coughing through some ornate church-y Latin.

Tim Granger had indeed seen him. He'd stumbled backward, away from the mist, and fallen hard on his tailbone. Draco emerged out of his disillusionment to take him by the shoulders from behind, propping him up, but also keeping him in place.

The Fat Friar noticed them and floated toward them, grinning and laughing. "Who do we have here?" he said by way of announcing them. "It's the bridegroom himself, Mr. Malfoy. I was just talking about you. Practicing for the big event."

Perhaps there was nothing the ghost could have said to make the scene more horrifying for Tim Granger. He shook himself free of Draco's hands and scrambled to his feet.

"Your guest, Mr. Malfoy," the Friar called, floating in a circle around them, keeping Tim from fleeing. "Who is your guest?"

"This is Dr. Granger."

The ghost smiled in a way that might have been charming if he wasn't dead. "A doctor - another man of learning, like myself. Dr. Granger was it? Granger - that's the name of our bride, isn't it, Mr. Malfoy?"

Draco nodded, sheepish to admit it when he knew Tim hated it. "Yes, Friar."

"An honour to meet you, sir," he said, making a slight bow and another turn around them. "Yes, I know your names. It's been ages since our last Hogwarts wedding. And once again, I am to help officiate at the matrimonial charm ceremony. It is an ancient and particular rite. Extraordinary, Dr. Granger, that your clever daughter was able to exercise it with such precision and force when she cast the first charm. Astounding, really. She's a credit to you."

Tim, no longer dumbfounded, was now growling. "Excuse me, I'm after my cat."

The Friar peered down the corridor, after Crookshanks. "That one?" he laughed, tucking his thumbs into his belt. "That is no one's cat but his own. Dr. Granger, before you go, allow me to thank you, privately between just ourselves, for joining us here for the ceremony. As I explained to your daughter, this spell requires witnesses, and the more goodwill she is able to assemble, the greater our chances of prevailing against You-know-who."

Tim frowned. "I'm sure I don't know who."

"Prevailing against the Dark Lord," Draco whispered over his shoulder. "The man who kidnapped Dr. Mrs. Granger this morning. The one my mother is risking her life at this moment to save her from."

"To tell you the truth, I worry about that Potter," the Friar went on. "Chosen One, or what have you. His power comes from his superiority over You-know-who in the ability to love. But when it comes to you, Mr. Malfoy - " he whistled through his insubstantial teeth. "Well, it's a good thing you weren't here to hear him when I told him he'd have to find some love to feel for you, just a little, during the ceremony. Why, I even told him not to come if he couldn't find any joy in it. But the headmaster says that won't do so - "

The Friar left off talking to Draco, reaching out a hand to Tim instead, as if to clap him on the shoulder, his misty hand falling through him. "So it's a good thing you'll be there in support of the young people. Not just good, necessary. And congratulations to you. The Malfoys are an ancient family - Norman, I believe - and they've certainly seen better days, but all is not lost for them. Not at all."

As he was floating away, back to the portrait of himself, Tim took a courageous step closer to the Friar. "If I refuse," he began, "if I refuse to attend this ceremony, what will happen to my daughter?"

The Friar stopped, frowning. "The situation in which she finds herself is unprecedented. I cannot predict it with any certainty. But if it was me, with a child of my own, I know I would take every advantage, and risk nothing."

With that he darted through a picture frame, and vanished.

* * *

Tim and Draco arrived together in the married quarters on the seventh floor.

"Hermione, I'd like a word alone with your mother, if you please," Tim said, holding the door open for her.

"You want to be alone with me?" Ann teased. "It's the dress isn't it, darling?"

Tim couldn't bring himself to laugh.

Hermione was only too happy to leave them, scooting out the door, finding Draco outside and taking his hand, nearly running away from her parents' door.

"Draco, I'm so sorry," she said, kissing his hand as she led him along the corridor.

"It's alright," he said. "What kind of a father would he be if he didn't object to this? Imagine what my father would have to say about it if he was here?"

"Look at you," she said, stopping to examine his face, taking it between her hands. "You're exhausted."

He let his eyes close. "Yes, McGonagall told me to go to bed."

"Well then you'd better," she said as she pushed against the next door along the corridor. "Remember, McGonagall said this area was for married quarters, as in, there must be more than just the rooms Mum and Dad are staying in. Alohomora."

The door in front of her swung open, revealing a dim, dusty room full of ramshackle furniture. "In here, Draco. There's got to be somewhere you can rest without leaving me to go all the way to the dungeons."

He followed her inside, telling her what the monk had told her father about how crucial loving witnesses were to their ceremony, and how Harry would need to be free from anger, getting along with him as well as possible for the charm to reach its fullest potential.

"So we need to find Potter," he said, shadowing her as she used her wand to clear a path across the floor, toward the bedstead shoved haphazardly into one corner of the room. "We need to warm him up to this, so he can stop hating it so much, and not end up killed by the Dark Lord, or - "

She hushed him. "We will, Draco. We will. Harry comes later. For now - Scourgify." She spoke the cleaning spell and a great cloud of dust puffed out of the mattress, swirling into a neatly peaked pile on the floor. "It's the best I can do, darling. Come have a lie down."

She led him by the hand to the lumpy old mattress. "Darling," he repeated. "That's what your mum calls your dad."

"Oh - it is, isn't it. Do you mind?"

He was taking off his robe, spreading it like a sheet on the bed, turning to take her in his arms. "No, I love it."

She fell beside him on the bed, spreading her robe over them. "Good, because I don't think I'll be able to help calling you that, once we're a family."

He grinned as he fidgeted against the mattress, trying to position his back to where the lumps would be least aggravating. "We've never been in a bed together like this before."

"Haven't we?"

"No. I'm sure I would have remembered," he said, settled enough now to pull her close. "Rugs, grass, sofas, hospital cots, but no beds."

She nestled her face against his chest. "Hospital cots count as beds, don't they?"

Draco furrowed his brow, thinking of an excuse. "It's not the same with Pomfrey bursting in and out without warning. In the hospital, there was none of this." He rolled over, his entire body resting on top of hers, his elbows on either side of her head. "And this is definitely different."

She laughed at him. "Draco Malfoy, wherever you are thinking of going from here, you are too tired for it."

"Am I?" he whispered in her ear before dragging his lips down the length of her neck.

"You are," she said, bending one leg around his waist, her heel in the small of his back. "See, you are completely unaffected by my wiles."

He bore less of his weight on his elbows, allowing himself to settle more closely and heavily onto her, the warmth at the center of her radiating against his stomach. He pulled his mouth away from her neck, looking into her face, his voice quiet, his breath noisy, his eyes wide and dark, suddenly not at all tired.

She took a deep breath to clear her head but it just pushed her chest more insistently against his. She watched his throat as he swallowed. His lips quivered but he didn't dare kiss hers, as if to do so here, now, might be an edge he wasn't sure he could step back from.

She dropped her leg, shifting sideways to lie beside rather than beneath him. He pulled her close again, kissing her forehead. "Four more nights," he whispered. "That's all."

She boosted herself to kiss his mouth, softly. "Go to sleep, Draco. After you drift off, I'll go fetch us something to eat."

"Don't let me sleep too long," he said, his eyes closed now as she smoothed his hair from his forehead. "Still need to find Potter."

She smiled, kissing his eyelids. "No talking about Harry Potter while you're in bed with me. Go to sleep."


	36. Chapter 36

**AN: A bit dark at first by keep reading to the end, my darling readers. Thank you for still being here! DDD**

It was a familiar sound, but that made it no less startling when Snape heard it. The sound was not one he should have been able to hear inside Hogwarts - the crack of a frantic apparation. He spun around in his study to face the intruder, his wand was drawn, teeth bared, expecting the worst. What stood before him, however, was a tiny house elf he recognized from Malfoy Manor.

"What is it?" he asked with icy caution. For months, nothing had called to him from Malfoy Manor but the burning of his Dark Mark - nothing, that is, except for one personal visit from Narcissa Malfoy, earlier in the school year.

Narcissa - his blood ran cold.

The house elf was weeping out a message about the mistress being hurt, dying fast. She reached for Snape's hand, pleading with him to come at once, forgetting to ask his permission as she apparated him away.

When Snape came to himself, he was inside the manor, upstairs in Madam Malfoy's bedchamber. The air smelled different. There was the usual scent of narcissus flowers, stone dust, and something more - blood.

Bellatrix leaned over the bed, moaning and wailing. "Cissie, no. You stupid girl. How could you? And for that." Her voice was rising ever higher. "Don't you see? He wasn't wrong - he had to do it. Cissie - for stars' sake, Cissie, stop bleeding."

Severus bolted across the floor, to the bedside. Sunk into the once white sheets, everything now soaked scarlet in blood, was Narcissa Malfoy, quiet and still, her body moving only as her sister jostled it, working to stop the flow of blood from a wound slashed into Narcissa's chest. She had torn open the bodice of Narcissa's robes, and was now pressing against her chest, just below her collar bones, staunching the flow with a lace-trimmed pillow.

"What was it?" Snape asked Bellatrix, shouldering past her to see the wound. "What did he use? Is it what I think it is?"

"Yes. Sectumsempra," she said. "I know it, of course, but not its countercurse."

No, Bellatrix Lestrange never saw any use in learning countercurses. She fell back to let Snape work, pushing her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing her younger sister's blood across her forehead, her clothing already darkened with it.

Snape had begun the song-like incantation, the wandwork over the torn, white flesh beneath the red patina of fresh blood. He took a breath. "How long ago?" he said before beginning the incantation again. The edges of the wound were knitting back together beneath his wand, but if Narcissa had bled for too long, lost too much blood, the mere repair of her tissue wouldn't save her.

"Not ten minutes ago. He let me take her away as soon as he opened her," she said, stifling something like a gag, or a sob, at the memory. "He had to do it, Severus. We had the Mudblood's mother here all morning - would have had the father too, if it weren't for bloody Yaxley and that Carrow. Yes, she was all locked up until Cissie let her go. I told him she did it only because she was mad but - she still had to be punished. It was only fair."

When Snape finished the next cycle he pressed his fingers to Narcissa's neck, feeling for a pulse. He pressed hard enough to wonder if he was merely feeling his own pulse in his fingertips. "Yes, the Granger woman made her way to Hogwarts this afternoon, her husband soon after, brought by Minerva McGonagall."

Bellatrix swore, cursing Yaxley and Carrow again.

Severus turned to look her over. "Enough about them. You were made your sister's keeper and yet you failed to stop her from letting the Granger woman go. Is all of that blood on your skirts your sister's, Bella, or is some of it your own?"

She nodded toward the bed. "All hers. Cruciatus for me. I've learned my lesson."

Snape grasped her wrist. "Oh, your lesson is not over yet. To keep your sister alive, we'll need an act of loving grace from you, a donation of your precious, pure Black family blood," he sneered into her face.

She struggled against his grip. "Use a blood engorging potion, you idiot."

"Impossible. Your elf dragged me away without any supplies. And there isn't time to retrieve them. If you were any kind of a faithful servant, Bellatrix, you would know that if she dies, the Dark Lord forfeits the strongest hold he has over his student operative inside Hogwarts. Little Draco can't be controlled without her. He is a teenaged boy ruled by lust for a filthy mudblood schoolgirl. Without the pull of his mother to balance his allegiances, he will desert the Dark Lord and all of his plans, even if it means severing his left arm completely."

Bellatrix snarled at the mention of her nephew's pristine Black family body mutilated.

"The Dark Lord knows this, of course," Snape went on. "Which means, if he didn't trust us to be able to shove Narcissa back from the brink of death, he never would have done this to her. Will you abuse his trust, Bella? Yet again? "

"Never," Bella hissed back at him. "And she is my baby sister, Severus. You needn't harangue me with all the reasons she musn't die."

He tugged her toward the bed by her wrist. "Then roll up your sleeve."

* * *

When it was over, and Narcissa Malfoy was sleeping, clean and dry, with a palpable pulse in her throat, Severus fell into the chair at her vanity. Bellatrix lay beside her in the bed, tracing fine blue veins through the thin white skin over her sister's temples as she slept.

"You are too terrified to leave this room," Snape taunted her. "You fear he is still angry enough to slaughter you on sight."

She sat up, fingering the mark on her inner elbow, where Snape had drawn out her blood. "I fear nothing of my Lord. He is just and fair, and no one serves him better, more eagerly than I do." She slid off the bed, the soles of her feet smacking against the hard floor, limping away on Cruciatus ravaged legs, her dress stiff with dried blood, off to hide from her master in her own bedchamber.

Snape's shoulders slumped as the door crashed closed behind her. He listened to her steps scuffling away before he stood and walked to the bed. Kneeling beside it, he took Narcissa by the chin, gently swivelling her face toward him. Her eyelids fluttered but did not open. He frowned, bending to watch her in profile, her nose high and pointed, her skin more pallid than he'd ever seen it, her brow smooth, curving into her angel-fair hair.

A sneer curved at one half of his mouth. Leave it to Lucius to marry a person who looked so much like himself. They were an unsettling couple, like a pair of dangerous siblings. Such was Lucius's love for himself.

Even after the transfusion of her sister's blood, Narcissa's face felt alarmingly cold under Snape's fingertips. He leaned forward to sense its temperature with the side of his face leaned against hers. After a moment, he turned to use more delicate instruments, his lips, closed and dry, left pressed to her cheek long enough to warm her skin.

Her voice sounded in her throat, a murmur. "Lucius…"

His spine whipped upright. "Madam Malfoy," he said, his voice clear, calling to her.

She moaned, her eyes cracking open, as if the dim room was brightly lit. "Severus? Why - " Her voice was torn away with a cough. Severus slid an arm beneath her, propping her up as she coughed rusty, bloody phlegm into his handkerchief.

"Don't speak. Don't move," he said, easing her onto her back again. He waited until she was quiet before he went on. "You helped Mrs. Granger escape."

She gave a weak smile, defying him as she said, "It's Dr. Granger, actually."

"What have you," he droned. "She was meant as leverage against Hermione Granger, a way to force her surrender to the Dark Lord. What have you done? Clearly, you are no longer loyal to him, and it nearly cost your life. If I'd been a moment later..."

She smiled at the ceiling as his voice trailed off. "But you did arrive in time, Severus. I knew you'd - " It was Narcissa herself who couldn't continue now. She cleared her throat. "The truth is, if the girl was captured, Draco would have destroyed himself to save her. What else could I do but interfere, for his sake?"

Snape lunged forward, his lips against her ear as he spoke. "I have made the unbreakable vow to protect him. Believe in that, Cissa. There was never a need to endanger yourself."

She pulled her ear away from him, tipping her head back into the pillows to look at his face. She raised a hand to his cheek, the long, straight jaw against her palm. "Severus, I do believe in you. You've protected us so selflessly, with such genius, and Draco as if he were your own son."

He sat back again, slowly, taking her hand from his face and laying it hand gently against the sheets. "Lucius," he said, "he is well enough in Azkaban, is he?"

"Well enough. Dearly loved, terribly missed, lost." She sighed at the ceiling above her. "I know, Severus, that the Dark Lord has promised me and Malfoy Manor to you, when everything is over. Lucius is not meant to survive to return to us. This we know."

Snape looked up at the ceiling as well. "I never asked for any of it."

"No, of course you didn't. You have your own motives for being his perfect servant - deep, old ones well beyond wealth and power, beyond Draco and me. And now I'll come to you with a nasty scar." She squeezed his hand as she breathed a laugh.

"Dittany - have you got any?"

"Yes, in the bathroom."

He summoned the vial into his hand, rose from his knees to sit on the edge of the bed, bent over her, dropping the potion onto the red gash visible through her ripped clothing. This was the Dark Lord's violent perversion of matchmaking. Even this close to her, Snape knew he and Narcissa Malfoy would never be together. But at this moment, it pleased him to care for her, to hear her thanks, to look at her and wonder at how beautiful another mangled, flawed person could be.

As he stoppered the vial, Snape let out a long breath. "Come back to the school with me," he said. "The headmaster seems to be collecting endangered parents. You ought to be among them."

She shook her head against her pillows. "Draco is safer if I stay here. If they don't have me under this roof, they'll use the Mark to call him back more insistently, more frequently. Until eventually," she gestured to the wound on her chest. "Eventually his evasions will fail him and he'll die here. And not like Abraxas Malfoy, as an old man surrounded by loved ones, but as a deserted, disgraced dead end to this line."

Snape joined their hands, raised them, leaning his forehead against their knuckles. He wanted to give her hope, to tell her the matrimonial charm would be cast this weekend, and they might have a chance to get the demon out of her house. But it would be better if her mind was empty, nothing more in it for the Dark Lord to discover.

Narcissa pulled their hands toward her face, pressing a kiss to the back of Snape's bloodstained hand. "Go back, Severus," she said. "Go back alone, and save our boy."

* * *

In the Great Hall, supper was almost over by the time Hermione came skidding inside.

Ron was still at the Gryffindor table, Pansy sitting beside him, leaning over his lap, deftly buttering a slice of bread after he mentioned, idly, that he might not have eaten quite enough.

He was laughing at her. "Why are you like this?"

Pansy's head snapped round to look at him. "Like what?"

He brushed the end of his nose against hers. "Doting. Fussy, even. Cutting meat for me, spreading marmalade, blowing soup, and the rest of it. Like you're hell bent on waiting on me, but only while I'm eating."

She scraped the edge of the butter knife clean along the bread's crust, scoffing at him even as she continued to fawn, raising the bread to his mouth. "Welcome to pureblood dinner etiquette, darling. I've been trained since I was a tiny girl to see that the men in my care have all their needs met at dinner time. Don't take it too personally. It's second nature to me."

He bit into the bread without taking the slice from her fingers, relishing it with a low growl, his hands grabbing her at the waist, pulling her close.

"Your nutritional needs only," she hurried to say, squirming in his arms, pushing and laughing as she spoke. "It's supposed to be courteous and dignified. Don't make it lascivious."

Ron had swallowed his bread and was moving his mouth to Pansy's neck, repeating the word 'lascivious' against her skin when Hermione collapsed into the seat beside him. He was happy to ignore her, but Pansy was knocking her fist on his chest, clearing her throat.

Ron sighed. "Hi, Hermione."

"Hello," she said, opening her book-bag to load it with food she was wrapping in napkins.

Ron raised his eyebrows. "Running away from home?"

"No, Malfoy's sleeping through dinner on McGonagall's orders. He's still not altogether well, so I'm making sure he doesn't go hungry whilst trying to catch up on sleep."

Pansy smirked. "Look at that. Pureblood dinner etiquette without the pureblood. Well done, Granger."

Hermione glanced at Ron. "What's she on about?"

He sat back. "Ask her yourself. The two of you have to be friends now."

Both of them groaned. "Smooth, Weasley," Pansy said, rolling her eyes. "Right then, shall I come by your dorm to braid your hair later, Granger?"

Ron was scoffing now. "Yeah, good luck with that."

"Shut up, Ronald," the girls said in unison.

He did, but looked quite pleased with himself.

"Where is Harry?" Hermione said, standing up, her bag packed with bread and meat and fruit.

"Off with Dumbledore. Getting serious about your charm," he said.

She nodded. "Makes sense. There isn't much time. We have to do it Sunday. That's what the star charts say."

Pansy's face paled. "Th-this Sunday?" she stammered. "You'll be Madam Malfoy by Sunday?"

It was too loud and Hermione sat down again to speak quietly to them. "You'll be there with us won't you? Both of you? Without witnesses who wish us well, the charm loses power. That's what your Hufflepuff Friar told us, Pansy."

"He isn't my Hufflepuff - "

"And we can't spare any power," Hermione went on. "There's too much at stake. Maybe a whole war. So say you'll come. Please."

Ron sighed again. "This is not how you make friends, Hermione - threatening them with war breaking out if they don't come to your party."

He meant to tease her but she looked hurt. "Sorry," he said. "It just makes me tense, the thought of you married by this weekend."

She nodded. "I know that. It is sudden, and I'm sorry. But I need you anyway."

Pansy leaned past Ron, taking Hermione's hand, and shaking it. "Congratulations, Hermione. I would be honored to witness your ceremony."

Hermione smiled primly, replying, "Thank you, Pansy."

Pansy linked her arm through Ron's, nudging him hard with her shoulder. "Right," he began. "I'll be there too. I can't say I'm happy for you, but I do believe if there's anything good to be had in this, you'll find it, even with him."

Hermione couldn't quite smile at that, but she did manage to say, "Thank you, Ronald. I suppose that will do. Now help me get the same out of Harry."

* * *

"But I don't understand," Harry was saying from where he sat coiled and tense in what was meant to be a comfortable chair in Professor Dumbledore's office. "Draco will inscribe a charm on Hermione's arm, almost identical to his own, complete with the cat scratch."

"Yes, and they will each speak an incantation Miss Granger is adapting from what's left of the old texts. Then the matrimonial charm will be in place," Dumbledore finished.

"Which makes them married?" Harry asked again, always hoping for a different answer but never hearing anything but...

"Yes."

"Well, sir," Harry paused. "Sir, I hate to sound selfish, but what exactly am I supposed to do in all of this?"

Dumbledore smoothed his sleeves with his fingers. "I do wish I could tell you, Harry. You are correct that exactness is what is needed to put the charm in place and to activate it, which I believe you've already seen them do."

Harry squirmed, remembering Hermione kissing Malfoy's arm in the hospital wing.

"Once it is activated," Dumbledore went on, "your struggle against Tom Riddle will begin. The both of you, as one, will be torn from the Malfoys' charm as it transforms from a pledge into a marriage. You will be reeling together in a space between, a fragment of Tom's soul once again wounded and dependent on yours more desperately than it will have been since he first attacked you as an infant."

Harry sat back in his seat as if blasted by an awful, half-held memory.

"In that moment, Harry, he will be weak."

Harry caught his breath. "Yes, but what do I do?" He was nearly shouting now. "Just tell me, Professor. I want to do it properly, but I don't know what it is."

Dumbledore's voice was rising too. "You will do what he will never do, Harry. You will love."

"But what does that mean?" Harry railed. "Hearty hugs all around? Friendship bracelets? Please sir, I don't understand."

The tension was broken. Dumbledore was chuckling, stroking his beard with his blackened fingers. "Perfect, Harry, my lovely boy. No one has ever explained to you how to love. During your most formative years, no one showed you either. Yet you do it with faithful, earnest beauty all the same. When the time comes, you will find, once again, that you will not need it explained to you."

Harry was still frustrated, doubled over in his chair, removing his glasses to rub at his eyes and forehead.

Dumbledore went on. "I can't tell you how to act in that moment, Harry. But I can counsel you on how to prepare for it."

Harry slid his glasses back onto his nose, sitting up, attentive.

"Your relationship with one of your best friends, Miss Granger, has deteriorated somewhat over the course of this school year." It was not a question.

Harry nodded. "Thanks to Malfoy, yes."

"Indeed," Dumbledore said. "If you wish to be prepared for this Sunday's ceremony, work at repairing and strengthening the ties between yourself and Miss Granger. Your fears are right, Harry. This will mean beginning a friendship with Mr. Malfoy. But, if I may speak as someone engaged in keeping peace among the students at this school, it is high time that you did."

He was rising to his feet behind his desk. "This is an assignment which could be one of great sweetness for you, Harry. I send you down into the school on a mission to love and be loved. That is where our best hopes lie. Now go. You will find Miss Weasley waiting at the bottom of the stairs."

* * *

Draco was still asleep when Hermione returned to the dusty, dilapidated married students' quarters on the seventh floor. There was no point in worrying about sullying the mattress with crumbs, so she sat beside him, setting out the food noisily enough to wake him.

He sat up rubbing the almost completely healed gash on his chest. He had rested long enough to be hungry, and for once, she didn't need to cajole him to eat. She ruffled his sleep-rumpled hair before tucking in herself.

"So what are you going to wear to the ceremony, since you won't wear the dress I like best?" he asked, grinning archly. "You said it should be something with short sleeves to make the inscription. What do you reckon, then. Maybe that pink number you got at Christmas for McLaggan?"

"Stop, it Draco," she scolded, laughing at him. "I would wear the dress you picked for the Yule Ball if it were suitable, but it isn't. Don't sulk, Draco. It's not like you've offered to let me choose what you'll wear to the ceremony."

He huffed. "No one cares what I wear."

"Well, I do," she said.

He smirked. "What would you choose for me? I have a vast array of dress robes so you can't simply say that. Be specific."

She frowned. "Since my parents may be there, wizard dress robes might be a bit - much. Mum and Dad would be more comfortable if you wore some of those clothes of yours that are almost exactly like Muggle suits - "

"I have no such clothing."

"You do. All you Slytherins do, even if you don't know it. You look like a lot of stylish Muggles."

Draco shuddered. "Well, I'm not asking what your parents would like me to wear. I'm asking about you. If you could have me dressed in anything, what would it be?"

Hermione didn't giggle often, but she did now.

Draco raised his eyebrows. "What?"

She shook her head. "Never mind."

He set down the bread he was eating, shifting closer to her on the bed. "Out with it. What would you have me wear?"

"No, it's ridiculous."

"Hermione - "

"Fine. I'd have you dressed in - in your quidditch uniform."

Draco gave a triumphant yell, grabbing her around her waist, lifting her into his lap. "I knew it. You and quidditch players. It's just like everyone always says."

"Oh, shut up, Draco," she said, still laughing at herself. "It's not the stupid game. It's - I don't know - the white trousers? Or the leather? I can't say." She kept trying to explain anyway, even as he lowered his face toward hers. "You just - when you're dressed like that, it's - "

There was a loud knock at the door and they sprang apart, as if they weren't about to be married in four days.

"It must be Mum," Hermione said, rising to open the door.

"See, I told you the map is never wrong." It was Ron's voice. "Looks deserted, but here they are."

He stood in the corridor outside the suite, re-folding the map, dropping it to reveal himself, Pansy, Ginny, and Harry. Ron bobbed his head sideways to see around Hermione's bushy hair. "Come on out of there, Malfoy. Dumbledore's told us we'd all better fall in love with you before Sunday."

Draco stood up, coming to join Hermione in the doorway. "Any ideas how?" he asked, eyeing Potter without much hope.

Ron shrugged. "Pansy said something about braiding each other's hair, didn't you love?"

Draco smirked, looking down at Hermione as he said, "You know, lads, for the first time this year, I've suddenly got a hankering to play some quidditch." Hermione elbowed him in the side but he went on. "Not the usual arrangements either - mixed Gryffindor and Slytherin teams, scramble up our usual positions too. How's that?"

Harry shrugged. "Sure. I'm off the team now. What do I care?"

"That's the spirit, Potter," Draco said. "Meet you on the pitch in twenty minutes."


	37. Chapter 37

By the time Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy met with the rest of the mismatched players they could get together for an informal game of pickup quidditch, it was dark enough that the lights over the Hogwarts pitch had to be lit. No one had changed the password for the illuminating spell since Harry had been stripped of his captain's position, so he was still able to bring the grounds blazing to life.

Everyone who'd come was dressed for sport, but only those who'd played on the house teams had full uniforms: Harry, Ginny, Ron, Draco, Blaise, and Crabbe and Goyle. Suited up in old padding from the bins of scuffed and damaged equipment in the field house storage room were Pansy, Hermione, and, oddly enough, Lavender Brown, whom Blaise had insisted be invited as their tenth player. She could only be persuaded after Hermione promised to write the introduction and edit all the spelling and grammar for her upcoming charms essay.

For safety's sake, Crabbe and Goyle would be on opposite teams, playing as keepers, where they would have few chances to come in contact with fellow players, and no chances to gang up together on anyone.

Also in the interest of safety, Pansy and Hermione would be seekers to keep them largely out of the fray of flying brooms, bats, and projectiles. It was well known that Pansy was a much better flyer, and unless the snitch materialized in Hermione's pocket so she didn't have to let go of her broom to catch it, Pansy would naturally be the one to find it.

Since the teams were smaller than normal, they agreed to play with one bludger instead of two, which meant playing with one beater instead one two. It demanded a complete departure from typical beater strategies, which was fine since neither Draco nor Ron - the players filling the positions - had ever played as beaters in a game before. But they did know one thing...

"Now, hang on," Ron protested. "It's not bloody likely that Malfoy's going to spy Hermione about to catch the snitch for the other team and smash the bludger at her to knock her off her gourd."

"Well, it will all cancel out since the same could be said about you seeing Pansy about to catch it for your opposing team. Isn't that right?" Draco asked.

Ron was so slow to answer that Pansy stamped her foot and yelled, "Isn't it?"

Ginny, the author of all the arrangements, was cackling madly at her own chaos. She and Harry were on opposite teams as well, playing as chasers. Blaise and Lavender were the other pair of opposing chasers, Lavender looking more and more tense as she realized all the other chasers weren't leisurely players like herself, but school athletes. It didn't relax her at all to notice Blaise's leering at her growing more and more brazen.

Ginny pointed her wand toward the chest where the balls were stored, "Right. Positions everyone. Once we're all up, I'll release them."

Hermione dropped her gym-class-issue broom on her own feet and took Draco by both his hands as best she could whilst he held a beater's bat. "What have you done, Draco? What am I doing out here? How in the world did I let them persuade me to play?"

He shushed her, kissing her cheek. "It's all in fun, darling. No one's going to be at their best." He tapped the end of the bat against the tip of her nose. "I'm not a beater. I'll be rubbish too. So don't fret. No one expects you to do anything, let alone win the game. Just fly up somewhere high and admire the rest of us until it's over."

She was still pouting.

He slipped his arms around her waist and pressed his forehead to hers, murmuring into her face, "Drift above us, like some glorious angel, and wait until it's over. You can do it."

She took a deep breath, inhaling the woodsy, leather smell of him in his quidditch persona. "You look - really nice," she murmured back at him.

"Why thank you - "

"Oi, you two!" Ginny was calling. "Get into position already."

Draco bent to hand Hermione her dropped broom, and then rose into the sky. Obediently, she climbed into the cold night air as high as she dared, wobbling in place, waiting for Ginny to release the balls with a flick of her wand.

As the balls exploded from the chest, Hermione had eyes only for the bludger, flying out of the box and whipping toward her as if it was cursed.

Ron lurched in front of it, batting it away. "Keep moving, Hermione!"

Blaise and Ginny were diving for the quaffle, outnumbering Harry who was completely unsupported by Lavender and quickly shut out of the race for it. Ginny got to it first, wheeling round to chuck it expertly past Crabbe's ear and through the ring.

"Use your arms to block!" Harry called to Crabbe as Ginny's team celebrated. "Your arm - it's like a beater bat only it's made of meat."

"Like this," Draco shouted, showing Crabbe a vulgar gesture he was known to be expert with.

Harry shook his head, his face neutral but fighting back a smile.

As Draco got better and better at neutralizing Blaise with well-aimed bludgers, Harry became able to challenge Ginny for the quaffle. Even without much help from Lavender, he eventually managed to score on Goyle. Lavender and Pansy cheered and swooped in celebration, linking hands and swirling their brooms together in a neat, tight circle.

At the sight of it, Ron cheered as well, in spite of his team giving up a goal.

Blaise watched the girls, his mouth slightly open. "What is that?"

"That, mate," Ron crowed, "is figure flying."

Blaise's stunned look flowered into a smile. "I have got to see more of that."

As the girls on their team celebrated in their own way, Harry glanced at Draco. He'd be pulverized playing in a real match with two bludgers and three highly skilled fellow beaters, but Draco was holding his own in this match, protecting Harry on their unevenly matched teams, making it work. Draco glanced at him in return, politely turning away to smirk at the unspoken gratitude.

Ginny used the short break to soar closer to Hermione. "You alright up there?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Aren't you cold?"

"Not much, thank you."

"Bored then?"

"No, it's all very thrilling," came her tremulous, unconvincing answer.

"Is it? Well have you tried - hunting for the snitch?"

"Oi, Ginny!" Ron was calling, "leave her alone, or you'll get her killed."

But Hermione was properly shamed and followed Ginny closer to the goal posts, nearer the game. Pansy was making a lap of the pitch, sitting up straight on her broom, her back slightly arched, waving tauntingly up at Hermione.

"Don't let her intimidate you," Draco was calling up to her.

Blaise tossed the quaffle back into play, ringing it off Ron's head to jolt him out of ogling Pansy. Ginny snatched the rebound, speeding toward Crabbe as he lurched awkwardly between the rings.

"Steady, Crabbe!" Draco cheered him.

But as the bludger whizzed by Crabbe, he acted on his beater reflexes, turning to deflect it with the end of his broom. It was a soft, loose hit, sending the bludger careening toward his own star chaser, toward Harry.

If he'd been a better beater, Draco would have been able to rush out to meet the bludger with the smack of his bat. As a seeker, his instincts were different, and before he realized what he'd done, Draco had positioned his entire body in front of the bludger, shielding Harry with himself. The thud of the fast, heavy projectile colliding with Draco's side was heard all over the pitch. A collective groan went up from both teams as he sank in a controlled fall toward the pitch.

For the first time in the match, Harry was speaking to him. "Honestly, Malfoy, it's just a pick up match. Don't sacrifice your body for it."

"Got to protect the chasers," he said hissed, smirking, bent over his aching ribs.

The rest of the players were descending to stand with them on the frosty turf. Draco raised his head to note each of their faces as they landed. "Where's my girl?" he asked when everyone but Hermione had arrived.

"I'm here," she said, walking toward them, dragging her broom by one hand, and pinching something small, golden, and twitching between the fingers of her other hand. "I've got this thing. Can we go in now?"

* * *

Ginny had lit a fire in the field house stove, and they sat inside, drinking the cocoa Blaise had instructed a troop of house elves to bring out to them. Hermione hadn't drunk any, not so much out of solidarity with the elves, but because she was occupied with daubing the anti-bruise balm the Weasley twins had given her when their telescope blackened her eye onto Draco's ribs. He lay on a bench, his jumper hiked up, most of his torso exposed as she worked.

"Look at him lying there like a Caesar while she ministers to him," Harry growled at Ron. "How am I supposed to like him when he acts like that."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Like what, Harry? Like the bloke who got hurt trying to protect you?"

"He needn't have - "

"That's completely off the point though, isn't it?" Ron said. "He's trying. I reckon he'll always be a git, but you've got to admit he's trying. He got it to work on Hermione, so there's hope for you too."

She had finished with the balm and Draco was sitting up, shifting his clothes back into place, but now he was pulling Hermione to sit on his lap.

"Draco, Harry's not going to feel comfortable talking to us if you're like this," she warned, smoothing his hair.

He sighed and let her go. "Right. I'll get us something to drink."

He crossed the floor to where Blaise stood leering at Lavender.

"Pansy's going full Gryffindor," Blaise said, watching as she applied her plum lipstick to Lavender's lip with the tip of her pinky finger. "First she adopts Weasley, and now she's fraternising with this whole lot."

Draco smirked. "You seem a bit tempted yourself, Blaise."

He sniffed. "What's Brown's blood status?"

"Who cares? Cheers." Draco tipped his mug of cocoa and stepped away.

Ginny still hadn't come back from putting all the borrowed school brooms and padding back in their places in the storage room, leaving Harry on his own, leaning on the wall next to the exit. He was eyeing the storage room door, anxious for Ginny to emerge so they could leave for the castle, for their common room where Slytherins wouldn't follow.

He swore under his breath. Here came Draco, sauntering across the floor.

"Very interesting match, Potter," Draco began. "You know, you might have been a chaser."

Harry drained his cocoa cup. "Might have been. When you join the team in first year, seeker's the only position they'll let a kid have."

Draco smirked, judging it wise not to mention coming on as a seeker himself in second year.

"I'll say it, Malfoy," Harry went on, through gritted teeth. "Ever since you quit the Slytherin team, they've been rubbish."

Draco laughed. "Have they? I hadn't noticed."

Harry nodded. "No, I don't suppose you would have. But it's true."

"I would have much rather been playing quidditch this year than…" He didn't know how to continue.

"Trying to stop a war?" Harry finished for him.

Draco shook his head. "Even if all goes perfectly, we won't be able to stop him. We'll just slow him down long enough to let you and the headmaster - do what only you can do."

Harry shifted on his feet, still hoping to see Ginny coming through the door, but glad for the chance to ask a long-held question. "Tell me, Malfoy. Do you regret it?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Regret it? Yes, most of it. Are you trying to get me to apologize for an itemized list of sins and misdeeds? Because I'll do my best, Potter. Start naming them off - "

"No, no, that's not what I mean," Harry said. "I'm talking about this coming weekend, about your charm - your marriage. It's not - ideal."

Draco looked across the room to where Hermione sat with Ron refusing to answer how it was that she came to catch the snitch, denying she used any magic other than flying, getting loud and getting dragged back into old arguments about other times she bent the rules.

He smiled. "I would have liked to marry Hermione under circumstances other people were able to be happy with. I mean, you should have seen her dad today. Not happy in the least. I feel a bit sorry for them, but not for myself. No, for me, regret doesn't come into this at all."

Ginny was back, draping herself over Harry's shoulder, nuzzling his cheek. "Let's go home," she said, leading him away.

"Nice talking," Harry said as they turned to go. "And thanks for the save."

* * *

Near midnight, after the quidditch pitch went dark, as Tim Granger lay awake staring at the ceiling of the enchanted castle, Severus Snape made his return to Malfoy Manor. No one had called him this time, but he had come all the same, feeling uneasy, knowing nighttime was when the Dark Lord was active inside the manor, holding grim audiences in the drawing room, or fretting and scheming with just Wormtail and Bellatrix, livid and hunched over his wounded hand.

Snape had to sneak back to check on Narcissa Malfoy's recovery. It was the Dark Lord's unhinged desperation that drove him to punish her beyond what would normally seem reasonable to him, almost to death. If he had returned to his calculating and coldly rational self, he would now let her recover, and keep to the course he'd set using her to manipulate young Malfoy to infiltrate the castle through the vanishing cabinets. But he could no longer be trusted to be calculating. He was enraged that the Grangers had escaped, and all the while, his hand burned with Hermione's magic.

Snape slipped through the manor's kitchen door, the house yielding to him, letting him enter without the spoken permission of anyone inside. The elves nodded at him with wild, scared eyes but said nothing to alert anyone as he passed among them, tiptoeing along the kitchen stairwell to the bedrooms upstairs.

He disillusioned himself as he moved quietly down the corridor. He would look into Narcissa's bedchamber to see she was sleeping undisturbed by her wicked house guests, and if he was satisfied, he would return to the school without a word. He would have to be alert and awake when Miss Granger came knocking at his study early in the morning to begin composing the incantation for her matrimonial charm. So many people, so many crisscrossed threads...

There was light inside Narcissa's room, a candle burning on the table next to her bed. By its light, he saw movement - shaking and tossing within the sheets.

He stepped closer. Narcissa was in bed but not sleeping. She clutched the blankets beneath her chin, her teeth chattering. "Severus," she said.

He stepped into the dim, orange light. "You are just as I left you, hours ago. No one has been in to care for you since then?"

"No. No one. And I'm dying of cold. Please…"

He felt the bed linens. They were thick and ample, but her cheek was still cold to his touch when he brushed his fingers against it.

She snatched at his hand as he drew it away from her face, pulling it back toward her skin. "So warm."

"As I feared," he said, letting her press his hand against her face. "The transfusion was insufficient. I've come with a blood engorgement potion which you must drink, immediately."

With one arm around her, he raised Narcissa to sitting, offering the vial in his other hand. She took it and drank as best she could through her chattering teeth, keeping her fist clenched in the fabric of his robes, holding herself upright.

"It's not working," she said, her fist tightening.

He set the empty vial aside. "It will, after a short delay."

Her whole body shuddered. "Not short enough. Don't leave, Severus. Wait with me."

"Of course, I will. That's why I've come," he said, summoning a chair to the bedside.

But she kept her grip on his clothing, holding him with both hands now, clinging to the heat of his body. "Stay."

His hands covered her fists. "Madam Malfoy, you must lie back. You're exhausting yourself and growing colder the longer you're uncovered." He moved forward, pushing her back toward the mattress with his movement.

She used all of her strength to keep hold of him. "Don't let go of me, Severus. Lie here beside me until I'm warm again."

He sighed. "Madam, the impropriety - "

"Means nothing," she finished. "My husband, the true lord of this manor, is gone. I am left here as the Dark Lord's pawn, already run my course - utterly insignificant. And now I lie dying - "

"You won't - "

Her voice was high, breathy, near tears. "Please, Severus. Stay with me."

She was losing the strength to cling to him, her head lolling back. He let himself fall with her, onto the mattress. Her face looked up into his, glittering grey eyes pleading.

He slid his shoes off and lay next to her, pulling the blankets over both of them, tucking them around her back as she pressed herself against the front of him. She relaxed into him, her forehead against his chin. Her hair, freshly washed by Ann Granger that morning, smelled of Narcissus flower soap. He breathed in the scent. Narcissa, Lily - pureblood or Muggle-born, so many witches named for flowers.

He had lived like a monk, all these years, since Lily Evans died and he began this lonely life of stern, ascetic atonement.

Against his chest, Narcissa breathed a laugh through her nose. "How did I become so dependent on men?" she said. "Do you remember me at school, Severus? I didn't need anyone's help or rescue then - no husband, no son, no one bound with an unbreakable vow that inevitably involves me. Look at me now." She tilted her head to see his face. "Look at you."

Snape clucked his tongue and tipped her head against his chin again. "You are weathering a violent attack from the most powerful dark wizard of our time, and the only person outside this house who knows what you've suffered happens to be a man. It is no reflection on your abilities."

"You are too kind," she said. "It's alarming to me, how much stronger and safer I feel with you here."

"It's the potion."

"It's not." She was acting on old habits learned during a long marriage, opening her arms to hold them around him, forgetting about the slash on her chest. She hissed and recoiled in pain. "I'd better turn my wound away."

When her back was facing him, her pelvis seated against his, Snape clenched his eyes closed, an old Mitrian incantation in his mind keeping his body from responding to her, but doing nothing to curb the response of his feelings. He felt her shivering beginning to mount again and let his arm cover hers, his hand on the mattress in front of her stomach. The tension in her spine softened, and she nestled into his warmth. Her breaths slowed and deepened as she fell asleep.

He could have gone then, slipped out of the bed and into his shoes, down to the kitchen, and back out into the night. Instead, he tightened his arm around her waist, bowed his face into her hair, let out his breath against her scalp. Even in his atonement, he would allow himself to accept what Narcissa offered - this warmth, this brief reprieve from loneliness before Sunday came and he risked revealing his allegiance to the Dark Lord, and with it, his own destruction. Wandlessly, he extinguished the light.

Sleepy and barely audible, Narcissa whispered, "Severus, thank you."


	38. Chapter 38

By the light of torches burning in the wall sconces, Hermione waited in the underground corridor outside the Slytherin common room. She stood rolling the snitch she'd caught between her fingers, clicking it against her engagement ring, extending and retracting its delicate wings. Her first and only snitch - Ron had hounded her for the story of how she'd caught it. He had examined it to make sure it wasn't malfunctioning. He had weighed it in his palm and shouted "Reparofarge" at it to make sure it wasn't something else she had transformed to look like a snitch and then passed off as one. In the end, he'd handed it back to her, baffled.

The truth was that Ron had known Hermoine very well for a very long time, and if her plans had gone smoothly, he would have been right about the winning snitch being a fake. If their match had gone on for too long, she planned on using a transformation, a switching spell, to morph the snitch into the form of a small stone she was carrying hidden inside the pocket of her trousers, and the stone into the form of the snitch.

But when she spotted the snitch, and she pulled out the stone to do the switching spell, she had to take one hand off her broom, letting it buck, sending the stone flying, colliding with the snitch, causing it to crash to the turf. Just before the rest of the players became occupied with Draco taking a bludger for Harry, she had landed, and scooped up the limping, damaged snitch from the ground. No magic but flying was needed, just as she told Ron. Though she did use a simple Reparo spell to get the snitch back into tip-top shape before showing it to everyone else. But that happened after it was out of play so it hardly mattered.

Isn't that right?

In the corridor, the stones in the wall opposite her were grinding past one another to bring the Slytherin common room's door back into view. Draco was stepping out of it, dressed for bed in a soft long-sleeved t-shirt and flannel sleeping trousers, his hair still windblown, making it look slightly darker than usual. He looked at once more relaxed and more vigorous and healthy than she had seen him all year.

He had what she had been waiting for draped over his arm, and she was snatching at it before he could close the door behind himself. He held it over her head. "Allow me," he said as he pulled his green quidditch jumper, complete with an "S" for "seeker" embroidered on the arm, down over her head.

She made a high, happy cheer in the back of her throat as she slid her arms into the sleeves, hugging herself. He grinned and eased her hair out of the collar, fluffing it the way he liked it.

"Adorable," he said. "How did it take me this long to dress you up in this?"

She smirked at him. "It might have blown the cover off our secret relationship if I appeared at breakfast one morning wearing half of your uniform."

"Well, we missed a great opportunity to announce ourselves in exactly that way," he said, taking her in his arms, surrounding her in the warm, softness of himself in pajamas. He sniffed at her shoulder, grimacing. "You should have waited for me to wash it properly though."

She shook her head against his face. "That your jumper smells strongly of you is the point, really."

He looked vaguely uncomfortable. "Is it?"

"Yes," she said, a coy smile forming. "I am going to wear this to bed from now on - or, for the next four nights, at least."

He growled into her neck, lifting her up and turning in place. He was still holding her face level with his when he stopped.

She placed a palm on each of his cheeks. "Look at you. How can Harry Potter not want you as a dear, dear friend?"

He shuddered even as he laughed, as he always did when he remembered the moment Harry refused to take his hand in first year. But what he said as he stood her back on the ground was, "If it had been anyone else treating me like he did tonight, I would have said they were a cold, nasty prat. But seeing as it was Potter, it was as if he was positively gushing over me by comparison. I mean, by the time he'd left, he had thanked me for the bludger save and told me Slytherin had a better team when I was on it."

Her arms were still around his neck. "Will it be enough?"

He sighed. "I'll keep working on him. Frankly, I'm more worried about your father. But I suppose it's up to you to concentrate on your parents. I don't suppose you've seen them at all tonight."

She shook her head. "No, there hasn't been time. It's best if Dad sleeps on it, anyway." She pursed her lips, unconsciously taking on Professor McGonagall's thinking face. "Draco, are you sure there's no way we can get your mother to the ceremony? For sentimental reasons, naturally, but for her own safety as well."

He dropped his chin on the top of her head. "If we take her out of the manor, we'll draw his attention to me. That's what my mother told your mother when she set her free, and she's not wrong. We need to keep him ignoring me long enough for me to stay here and marry you. "

She boosted herself up to kiss him, sweetly. "Well, at least we know she's not mad - or, she wasn't mad for long enough to save my mum. That's got to be comforting. Isn't it?" His body stiffened, alarming her and causing her to lean back to look at his face. "Draco, what is it?"

"I keep trying to comfort myself with that thought, but something keeps burning, like an ulcer in my gut, telling me something is still terribly wrong with her. I don't know what, but I can't stop sensing it. Maybe it's some kind of divination, or maybe it's just common sense to suspect he'll want to punish her for what she did this morning."

Hermione squeezed him in a tight hug. "If it is common sense, then McGonagall will have thought of it too. And if she has, she'll have sent someone to the manor to check on your mum - the only person here but you who can still go there: Snape."

* * *

There was too much sunlight filtering through his eyelids. That was how Snape knew for sure, before opening his eyes, that he had fallen asleep and spent the night somewhere outside his dark dungeon living quarters. He remembered everything - that he was in Malfoy Manor, having sneaked in, having given Narcissa Malfoy a potion that may have saved her life.

Beside him, she lay on her back, his arm running like a bolster in the gap between the curve of her neck and the flat of the sheet. Would she be startled to find him there? If he waited long enough, would she roll along the slope of the mattress toward him, eyes still shut, nestling into him as she had during her convulsions the night before? Would she murmur her husband's name against his chest before she sorted the truth of their situation from the fantasy of her dreams?

His black hair had fallen forward and lay against the whiteness of her hair. The contrast was unequivocal. In the bright morning light, it was clearer than ever: this woman may have been hurt and scared enough to have slept in his arms, but she remained the other half of Lucius Malfoy, body and soul. It didn't matter where Lucius was. He lived, and while he did, he and Narcissa lived as parts of each other.

Snape shifted away from her. She wanted nothing from him but medical care and the comfort of a little heat. And indeed, her body had felt warm against his, her chest rising and falling with slow, steady sleep. There wasn't much colour in her face but she was, after all, Narcissa Malfoy. He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. It was warm and she was now awake.

"Severus."

"Madam Malfoy," he said, withdrawing his arm from underneath her head.

"You stayed all night," she said, her hand reaching for his arm as he turned his back to her.

"Obviously," he said, sitting up, kicking at the rug to find his shoes.

She was well enough, awake enough to be cross. "It's Madam Malfoy now, is it? No more Cissa, or even Narcissa?"

"I must be getting back to the school for an early morning appointment," he said. "I cannot stay to argue naming etiquette with you, Madam." He was standing, striding toward the door, listening at it, waiting for a quiet moment to let himself out.

She rose to kneel on the unmade bed. "Severus, I apologize if I asked too much of you yesterday."

"No matter," he said, his ear pressed to the door, not looking at her. "You supplied me with a new, provocative image to use in occulmency - a sight that looks like something significant, to be hidden and treasured, but which is, in fact, meaningless."

She was walking on her knees toward the edge of her bed. "I ought to thank you - "

"You already have."

" - Last night I was in extremity, not myself."

"Precisely," he said, turning away from the door to glare at her. "Your self is the same as your husband's self, completely removed from everyone else until it needs something from them. A remarkable marriage, truly. Blissful for yourselves, I'm sure. Repulsive to others."

She inhaled, her posture straightening, her neck elongating, chin tipped upward, taking on an imperious manner which was both Lucius's and her own. This morning, however, the pose brought the fresh wound on her chest more shockingly into view. "This is the mark of a blissful family life, is it? Enviable, is that what you think, Severus?"

He was feeling in the pockets of his robes, searching for another small glass vial, setting it on the surface of her vanity with a decisive click. "The blood engorgement potion."

With a dramatic flick of her hair, she declined to look at it. "Take it away. I can brew my own."

"Well, you needn't," he hissed. "Drink this final dose with your breakfast. I won't return until Sunday night."

"Quiet the room," she ordered the house as she stepped onto the rug in her bare feet. "Sunday, Severus? What will happen then?"

His lip twitched. "It's an arbitrary appointment. I could have said any day - "

"But you didn't," she said, walking unsteadily toward him. "You are already planning on Sunday. Something is happening then and you're keeping it from the Dark Lord by keeping it from me. Yes, no one knows a double-heart like another double-heart, someone else who works both sides of something, led by a personal compass that suits neither. That's you, Severus. Me and all. Perhaps it's everyone in this movement except for the completely, obsessively mad, like Bella. Tell me, what happens Sunday?"

Snape regarded Narcissa down the length of his nose. "Speaking of the double-hearted, the meeting for which I am now late is with your son and his," he sneered, "bride."

Narcissa raised one eyebrow. "Ah. Draco's bride. Sunday. I see." She was close enough to touch him now. "Those children are my hope. And that hope would have been dashed long ago if it had not been for you, Severus. You may be angry with me, offended. You may be disgusted by me, repulsed. But I can never stop hoping in you."

With the fastest casting of a disillusionment spell she had ever seen, Snape faded before Narcissa's eyes, stepping out of reach of her outstretched hand. She could barely see him as he opened her bedroom door, and left.

* * *

Draco came running down the stairs from the Entrance Hall into the anteroom outside Snape's dungeon office. He expected to be late and was surprised to find Hermione still standing outside a locked door.

"I don't like it. He's never late," she said. "I don't understand. I've knocked and knocked. Maybe, he's not in there. Maybe he never came home."

Draco shrugged. "He's either out fighting evil all night, or else he's out fighting, evil all night."

She laughed at him, tapping her quill against her jaw. "Who knows? He's nothing if not unpredictable. Rash, even."

Draco stepped closer, hushing her. "And sneaky. Watch what you say."

He had no sooner finished when Snape himself came billowing into view above them. "Miss Granger," he said. "Mister Malfoy."

There wasn't much room for the three of them to stand together at the bottom of the stairs. Draco crowded Hermione into a corner but he was still very close to Snape as he unlocked the door to his study. In the closeness, Draco could smell him - his hair, the waistcoat beneath his robes. It was a smell Draco knew well, lovely and comforting in and of itself, and then horrifying in the context of sensing it on Snape's person.

"Mother," Draco blurted as Snape pushed the door open in front of them. "That perfume of narcissus flowers. Professor - you've been with my mother."

Snape's lip curled. "Step inside."

"Is my father dead?" Draco was nearly shouting as the door to Snape's study slammed closed behind them. "Is this your way of telling me my father is dead? Because the teacher I have loved and trusted more than any other would not meddle with my mother while my father is still alive."

Snape took a great breath, as if recovering himself after a sound blow to the stomach. "I know nothing about your father, Draco, except what your mother tells us. She says he lives. However, your mother was made to answer for Dr. Granger's escape from the manor yesterday, and she required my help to survive the effects of the Dark Lord's punishment."

Hermione gasped. "No. Draco, I'm sorry."

"Cruciatus curse?" He needed to know.

Snape shook his head, once, violently. "No. It was Sectumsempra, something that would leave a lasting token. Complications set in when it became clear no one in the manor when it happened knew the counter-curse. She bled for nearly fifteen minutes before they brought me. She needed a transfusion from your aunt followed by two doses of a blood engorging potion and - and regular observation during the night. I remained in her chambers until just now."

"This happened yesterday? How could you not tell me?" Draco raved. "I was here sleeping and eating and playing quidditch while my mother was bleeding to death. And you said nothing."

Snape drew himself up tall. "Draco Malfoy, the truth is that when it comes to your feelings for one another, the members of your family cannot be trusted to be wise and cautious. Your drive for self preservation ends where your connections to each other begin. Even as we stand here now, I have locked that door as I cannot trust you not to race off to the manor to throw yourself in the path of the Dark Lord in defense of your mother this instant, voiding the sacrifice she made for you and for Dr. Granger."

Draco choked on his own rage and fell into the chair at Hermione's tiny desk. She stood next to him, cradling his head in her arms as he began to weep.

Snape stepped cautiously toward them. "Forebear, Draco. In three more nights, our best chance to save your family - present and future - will be upon us. Bide your time here as Miss Granger works to write the incantation, and prepare yourselves for the matrimonial charm to come into effect. That is the best way, the only way to avenge your mother."

"Sir, is she alright now?" Hermione spoke the burning question Draco couldn't compose himself to ask.

"Yes. She was quite herself when I left her. She will suffer no lasting effects. Only a scar, like Draco's own." Snape sniffed, smelling the narcissus scent on himself. "Please excuse me," he said, passing through the study to his private quarters beyond.

When he was gone, Hermione sat in Draco's lap and held him as he finished crying. She kissed his hair and his face. "You deserve to be this loved," she said between kisses. "It is only right that she do this for you. It's where she's truly belonged all this time - set between the Dark Lord and you."

"Let's hurt him, Hermione," Draco said. "Let's knot our family ties so taut with love that we tear him to bits for Potter to blast into ashes."

She closed her arms around his neck. "We will, my darling. We will."

* * *

With the door to the study locked, there was nothing for them to do but dry Draco's tears and get to work on the incantation. He sat on a low stool, his head laid back in Hermione's lap, looking up runes in Snape's dictionary as she asked for them.

Writing the incantation was extremely challenging. Apart from figuring out what to say, she had to read the old manuscripts in runes and write her new material in an old Latin.

"The Friar will be able to help," Draco said. "When Crookshanks took your father to meet him, he was jabbering away in Latin before he noticed us there."

"Well good," she said. "I'd hate for a war to start over my faulty conjugations."

Draco smirked up at her. "You could probably get it right conjugating purely from memory. This is open-book matrimonial incantation writing. Nothing to worry about."

"Your vote of confidence is inspiring, but misplaced," she smirked back at him. "And I'm afraid there's something else we're going to have to consult with a teacher about. It'll have to be McGonagall, I suppose, since we've already broached the extremely awkward subject with her."

Draco raised an eyebrow when she didn't go on. "Extremely awkward? Is it something about - "

"Yes."

"Sex? And the ceremony?"

Hermione's complexion turned decidedly pink, surprising Draco as they'd been talking about sex more and more lately and she hadn't seemed embarrassed about it in the least. He sat up, laying the dictionary aside to take her hands.

"Tell me."

She cleared her throat. "I can't tell for certain, but it seems to me that an important part of the ritual is - is consummation."

He sat back. "Oh."

"But surely they can't mean - that - with everyone sitting there - all around us - and us having to - "

Draco scrubbed his face with his hands. "Your father really is going to murder me."

"It has to be meant to happen in private," she said, flipping far too forcefully through the delicate pages of the manuscripts. "The ceremony was crafted by monks, for stars' sake. The same monks who dreamed up the purity clause. They wouldn't have approved of consummation happening anywhere but in private. Would they?"

"Of course not. Yes. You're right."

She slammed the tomes closed. "And even if they did, I'm not doing it. I've been modifying the monks' work at every step of this process and I will do it again if I have to."

Draco was nodding his head furiously. "Yes, that's right. Of course."

The door at the back of the study opened and Snape appeared, his hair washed, and his clothes smelling as they always did, of freshly dug roots and burnt brimstone.

"Morning classes will begin shortly," he said. "You are dismissed. Remember that you are forbidden, Mr. Malfoy, to leave the school for any reason until after the weekend. The Aurors at the gate have been alerted."


	39. Chapter 39

With just three days remaining before her wedding, Hermione asked Professor McGonagall to meet with her and Draco after classes finished for the day. McGonagall asked them to report somewhere outside her office, a room adjoining the Great Hall but two stories above the main floor. The staircase that once made the room accessible by walking had been blasted away in a lively conflict during the time of King Henry VIII and, thanks to the spite of both of the scrapping sides, it had never been rebuilt.

The door to the forgotten room had been in plain sight the whole time Hermione and Draco had been at Hogwarts, but they, along with all the other students, including the makers of Harry's map, had dismissed it as a high window kept shuttered, for whatever reason. It was not a window, but the doorway to the abandoned Hogwarts chapel.

After all the blasting and hexing and arguing over who got to use the chapel and how, the governors of Hogwarts finally decided worship ought to be a family matter, and sent students home during religious holidays, no more chapel.

It was for the best.

"But of course there's still a chapel in this building," Hermione said as she and Draco rose toward it, balanced in tandem on a broom. "What self-respecting castle in this country doesn't have a chapel, even a dusty, forgotten one?"

"Maybe it's where the Friar goes when he's not in the kitchen admiring the food or in the corridor admiring his portrait," Draco said, happy to distract his very nervous broom passenger, hoping she'd loosen her choke-hold on him.

She looked down as the floor dropped away beneath her feet. "Honestly, how are we going to get Mum and Dad up here without all sorts of grumbling and fussing?"

Draco laughed a little darkly. "Levitating into the chapel will be the least of their worries at their schoolgirl daughter's wedding, yeah? Really, your parents seem to take all the wizarding stuff in stride quite admirably. Maybe you could stop babying them."

She scoffed. "That's rich, Draco, you counselling me on how to manage my Muggles."

He smirked, waving his wand at the shuttered door to open it, Hermione gripping him more tightly than ever as he steered the broom one-handed. "See, it's all true," he said, "what you keep trying to tell people about me having changed since I was twelve years old. I'm happy to give Muggles credit where it's due."

"Maybe you're right," Hermione said, happy to have the floor beneath her feet again. "I've got to stop trying to shelter them - just give up on this ceremony being anything like a normal Granger family wedding."

McGonagall had not yet arrived, leaving the pair of them to dismount the broom and stand alone together in the stained-glass sunbeams burning through the ancient chapel windows. The place was as old as anything in the castle, but unlike the abandoned married quarters on the seventh floor, it was not dusty or musty. In the far corner of the space was a rack of votive candles, all lit somehow. In the centre, near the front, was an altar not unlike the ones at the churches they went to with their parents on Christmas and Easter. The stone walls and floor were marked with memorial plaques and busts of the witches and wizards buried there, all of them from before the sixteenth century.

Maybe it was all the graves, all the people who were not jolly, helpful ghosts but just ordinarily dead, that made Hermione look at Draco so intently as he said in a quiet, serious tone, "Here we are."

Hermione stepped to the wall, running her fingers over the name of one of the patrons entombed there. "Yes. The realness of it is different up here," she said. "Old, permanent."

He clasped her in his arms, lifting her onto her toes. "The incantation you're writing, Hermione, don't put the words 'til death parts us' in it. Promise me you won't. I can't bear that bit."

She smiled into the front of his robes, arms around his waist. "That's at the very end. I haven't got that far yet."

"Leave it out," he insisted, rocking them back and forth on his feet. "Because we won't part at death. We'll come back here as ghosts, dressed in our wedding clothes, whatever they turn out to be. And all the students will know us, and call us the Bride and Groom - "

"No, no, it will have to be a name with alliteration, so we match the others - "

He was nodding. "Right then, the Lachrymose Lovers, or something."

"Perfect," she said, laughing softly against his chest. He looked down at her, and she could tell he was about to say it, but she wanted to be the one to say it first this time. "I love you, Draco."

He didn't repeat it, but his smile softened and his eyes closed, his head tipping downward, toward her face. She rose a little higher on her toes and brought their mouths together. After two years, kissing each other was always nice, but it wasn't always like this. This wasn't a greeting or a parting, not a sweet vote of confidence or luck. It was a soulful kiss, where she opened up to him, taking him in, being taken. He joined himself to her with gentle possessiveness, filling her up, his hands pressing her closer, finding the back of her head, the curve of her waist, her hand pressed against his chest, his heartbeat, while the fingers of her other hand traced his jawline as it worked the kiss - perfect again.

"No trouble finding it, I see," Professor McGonagall said, the fireplace Floo still flashing green behind her when they opened their eyes. "Well done."

They broke apart, flushed but not from blushing, not apologizing, not anymore. It was indeed getting real.

Still, Hermione wasn't ready to pose her questions about consummation yet, and she began their meeting by showing McGonagall the sketches Draco had been making, practicing drawing the inscription.

McGonagall looked at the drawings down the length of her arm. "Well, it is difficult for me to say whether this is sufficient, since I have yet to see what's left of the mark on Mr. Malfoy's arm. And you cannot conjure it before the ceremony without risking disaster, so I cannot ask to see it. One question however: do you indeed intend to write the word 'faith' in English?"

"I hadn't considered anything else," Hermione said, cautiously. "The word 'hope' on Draco's arm was in English, after all."

"Yes, but think, Miss Granger. If you wrote faith in French…"

"Foi," Draco said.

Hermione gasped. "Foi, with an old-fashioned alternate spelling of f-o-y, as in Malfoy."

"Yes," McGonagall nodded. "It's rather fitting, but it is, of course, up to the both of you."

"Yes, do it," Hermione said, squeezing Draco's hand. "Do it in French, for your family."

"They don't deserve it, Hermione - "

"They didn't," she agreed. "But your mother - after yesterday - they do."

Draco accepted it, and sat in a pew, revising his sketches.

Once he was occupied, Hermione had the courage to ask Professor McGonagall about the role of consummation in the rite.

She seemed startled that Hermione would have worried about it. "What are you thinking, my child? Private - it shall all be very private of course. At the time when the ceremony nears its end, you may trust the headmaster to use his privileges of apparation within the castle to spirit you both away to your chambers, quite alone. The rest of us will remain here to watch over Mr. Potter."

Draco's face jerked up from his sketch, wincing at the thought of Harry having any connection to their wedding night. McGonagall patted him on the back. "Come now, Mr. Malfoy, it's not all bad."

"Harry won't be able to sense - anything - about us - will he?" Hermione asked.

Professor McGonagall pursed her lips. "Mr. Potter's corporeal connection is to Voldemort, not to either of you directly. He should be properly insulated."

"Should be," Draco repeated.

McGonagall patted him again. "I assure you, Mr. Malfoy, Potter will not be on your mind when the time comes." She turned her attention to Hermione. "Is that all?"

"One more thing for now," Hermione said, squirming more than ever.

"Out with it, Miss Granger. What is it? More on contraception?"

"No," she hurried. "It sounds silly, shallow, perhaps. But we've had some discussion about how we should dress for the ceremony."

Draco's posture straightened. "What's shallow about that?"

McGonagall stifled a smile. "Well, wherever possible, we ought to emulate the original Mitrian methods. So I advise you to pay particular attention to Professor Snape's illuminated version of the manuscript - the one with all the pictures - and dress after that fashion."

"After the fashion of the tenth century?" Draco nearly wailed. "In huge, stiff, undyed linen smocks with ropes for belts?"

Hermione was fighting to stifle a smile as well. "Oh come now, Draco," she said, taking his arm. "We'll have another look at the manuscript. I'm sure it's not as bad as all that. And isn't it better than me asking you to be married in your quidditch uniform? Isn't it?"

Draco groaned and tugged at his hair but said, "Fine, fine. Whatever we need to do to make it work. So - homespun sacks it is. My mother won't be there, so there won't be any society page photographers anyway. "

"Yes, no press. Very few guests at all," McGonagall confirmed. "Aside from some of your most trusted friends, hardly anyone from outside the Order will know about the ceremony until it has been successfully completed. The safety of yourselves, Mr. Potter, and Madam Malfoy all depend on it."

* * *

Tim and Ann Granger were ready to venture out of their quarters on the seventh floor of Hogwarts castle, ready to find their daughter and make another attempt at making sense of her life in the wizarding world. They stepped out of their room and into the corridor, lightly bickering about what to do and where to find her.

"Where is that cat when we need him?" Tim said, pulling back the edge of a tapestry to check for Crookshanks.

Ann had no patience for it. "We don't need a cat, we need a responsible adult, even if we have to settle for a wizard. We need to do what my sister does when she's at her kids' school. We need to find the headmaster and demand some answers."

Tim hung back as Ann strode toward the top of the staircase. "Darling," he began, "I feel I'd like to spend a little more time getting our bearings before we approach the head. They treat us like children because we haven't any magic, so the more informed we are, the more likely they are to respect us as adults when we come calling."

Ann shook her head. "Timothy, they treat us like children because we act like children - all timid and cowed by their power. Listen to me. I spent an entire day among them at that haunted house of Draco Malfoy's. I handled that Bellatrix character by stepping forward to meet her as an equal. That's how it's done."

Tim couldn't argue. Her success at Malfoy Manor spoke for itself. But that didn't mean he would concede everything to her. "Darling, we may get optimum results if we each pursue our own way. You go downstairs and inquire about the headmaster, and I'll start from here. There's clearly more going on in this wedding debacle than they've told us. We've got to figure out what's being withheld from us."

Ann gave a brisk nod. "Independent reconnaissance. Excellent, darling. I'll meet you downstairs by suppertime."

Alone in the empty corridor, Tim looked left and then right, falling into the habit he'd developed as a dentist faced with people who could not engage in conversation with him of talking aloud to himself. "Where can I find out what's been kept hidden from us?" he said a second time. "What no one's told us about Draco Malfoy - where can I find it?" he said a third time.

The empty corridor was suddenly noisy, rumbling with a sound like stones grinding against one another, as if a part of the castle was fighting to stand up and walk away. It put Tim in mind of the sound of the brick wall giving way to let them into that Diagon Alley neighbourhood where they buy Hermione's school things every year. He walked toward the sound, but saw nothing but a closed door in the wall opposite a rather hideous tapestry.

"May as well begin in here," he muttered to himself.

With only a slight push, the heavy-looking door gave way beneath his hands, opening up to a room stacked with ramshackle furniture, crockery, glassware, books, and all manner of bits and bobs. This must be the school's attic. It might be a good idea to search a place like this - if he had any idea what it was he was looking for.

Most of the large furniture in the room was covered in white dust-cloths, except for one piece draped in wine-coloured velvet. It stood out from the rest, and not knowing what else to do, Tim approached it, like a bumble bee attracted to a vivid colour. He tugged on one corner until the cloth slipped to the ground in front of him. He bent to gather it up, to put it back. But whoever had draped it over the ornate but otherwise unremarkable cabinet beneath it must have been exceptionally tall to reach to the top of it - or else, they'd been using one of those sticks, those wands. He laughed at himself. Of course they'd been using a wand.

Tim rolled the velvet over in his arms as best he could before laying it at the base of the cabinet. As he leaned forward to drop it, he heard something from behind its door - a fluttering and scratching. Something was caught inside of it. He turned the handle and stood back as something small and frantic flew out at his head.

He yelled in surprise, before laughing at himself. "Ruddy bird," he said, closing the door. Enough of creeping around in the attic, spooking himself.

Tim left the room and descended the stairs, hoping to find a familiar face - Minerva McGonagall, the dreamy red-headed Weasley boy, Crookshanks - anyone who could give him a clue to how to protect his family from a situation everyone swore was dangerous, but no one would explain properly.

He was all the way to the second floor when he finally spied someone he knew. Unfortunately, it was that odd black-haired chemistry teacher who made Hermione so nervous. Snape, he was called, and he was walking at the speed of a run toward the room where the Grangers and Draco Malfoy had met with Professor McGonagall the day before.

Tim changed direction, following Snape. His hand was raised, trying to catch Snape's eye, to slow him down to have a quick word. But Snape was too single-minded to notice, waving a hand to open the door to the room, passing through it and slamming it closed behind himself without so much as a glance in Tim's direction.

Tim stood in front of the door still vibrating with the slam and did what anyone so far out of his depth would have done. He settled in to eavesdrop.

There was a meeting going on in McGonagall's study. About half a dozen adult voices, men and women, were gathered inside to argue about Hermione's wedding.

"There are three nights left before the stars are right enough to even attempt the ritual," a man with an insistent but weary voice was saying. "I don't believe he'll let those days pass by peacefully. There's going to be some kind of attack before then."

"How can we tell whether he knows the wedding is coming at all?" another man asked, a familiar voice, perhaps Arthur Weasley.

"The wedding is no matter to him," Snape answered. "His impatience and murderous rage exist independently of any other plans. He is already acting on it. Madam Malfoy has borne the worst of it thus far."

"My dear Aunt Narcissa? What's happened to her?" a young woman asked.

"Sectumsempra," Snape answered. "Cast as a punishment after she freed Dr. Granger. I arrived barely in time. She will recover from that curse. But she may not survive another."

Tim felt sick. He couldn't tell exactly what had happened to Ann's friend Cissa, but the gasps from the crowd behind the door were amply ominous.

"Draco must have been beside himself," the first man said.

"Yes, he was," Snape agreed. "I have ordered him to remain in the castle, his desire for vengeance and rescue notwithstanding. The sentry Aurors have been instructed not to let him leave. But if he is called by the Dark Mark, he will not be able to resist answering. At the very least, the Aurors will go with him - but probably to their doom."

Someone scoffed. "Dark Lord indeed - he's more like a cross infant with a toothache," another familiar voice said, probably Molly Weasley. "He needs distracting - another toy to smash, to keep him away from the kids until they've finished their ritual."

The first man heaved a great sigh. "Well, I wouldn't send anyone marching up to Malfoy Manor looking for trouble these days, not even as a decoy. What's another strategic location of theirs we could approach, Arthur?"

"Borgin and Burkes, in London," he said. "Everywhere else has been raided or abandoned while the Death Eaters make the manor their stronghold."

"That's a mistake," the young woman said. "For centuries, that house has been enchanted to be loyal to the Malfoys. If You-know-who keeps slicing Narcissa up, the house itself is going to turn on him."

"He considers the house's qualities mere trifles," Snape said. "Inconveniences."

"And that's exactly where he's wrong," the young woman finished.

"Tell them what else we know about the junk shop, Arthur," Molly nudged him.

"Well, according to Harry, Borgin and Burkes is stocked with a full-sized vanishing cabinet. Been there for years. Just the one."

Even through the heavy door, Tim heard Minerva McGonagall clear her throat. Professor Snape was humming. "Yes," he said. "Its sister is well-known to us…"

Tim listened as Snape told the others about the vanishing cabinet hidden in an enchanted room on the seventh floor. He learned that it made a magical passageway to this Borgin and Burkes store that was strategically important to the baddies - the ones who'd taken Ann, cut up her friend, and did it all trying to get at Hermione.

"Draco Malfoy is repairing a vanishing cabinet right under this roof," Arthur was marveling. "Why that sneaky little - "

"Arthur, hush. He's just a boy," Molly scolded.

In the corridor, Tim grumbled something about Draco being very nearly a married man.

"Is the cabinet operational?" the first man said.

Snape was suddenly, inordinately sarcastic. "Oh, I don't know, Remus. Does the castle look like it's crawling with Death Eaters?"

Minerva was taking over. "We assume it is not, Remus. However, we do know it could transport inanimate objects since before our Christmas holidays. And it is possible that Borgin has made progress toward transporting living creatures from his end since then. But it has not been tested. The risk is too great with students in the school."

Snape had recovered his composure. "The Dark Lord has given Draco the end of term as a deadline for completing the repairs. But as his injury has advanced, it's become clear to me that the Dark Lord will not be able to go that long without lashing out. As you have rightly observed, there is no more time."

"We'll need to evacuate Narcissa then," the man named Remus said. "Now that Lucius has left her all caught up in his nightmare, we can't just leave her there."

Lucius, Tim thought, that must be Hermione's father-in-law, the one in prison. Good gracious, what had he done?

"She won't come," Snape said. "Narcissa fears her leaving would cause the Dark Lord to call Draco in her place. And she may not be wrong."

There was a pause before Remus spoke again. "I'm sorry, Severus."

"You needn't be."

"Well, what do we do?" the young woman said. "I've been patrolling that corridor on the seventh floor all year, hoping to catch Draco at something, but until he confessed to Severus, we learned nothing about any vanishing cabinets. If we can't even find the thing, how can we use it to distract You-know-who?"

"Draco would take you to it, wouldn't he Severus? He trusts you," Molly said.

Snape hummed again. "We had an unfortunate misunderstanding this morning. The trust between us is not what it once was. But perhaps he will tell Minerva."

"I shall ask Draco," she agreed. "And then we must find some use for the cabinet delectable enough to distract the Death Eaters from their pursuit of Miss Granger. I don't yet know what such a thing would be."

There was a moment of silence as they all searched their own imaginations. Unseen, Tim was thinking along with them, his heart beginning to race, his stomach churning and rolling. If the baddies couldn't get to Hermione, maybe they would be content to chase the closest thing to her...

The young woman broke the silence. "Well, if we can't think of anything, we could simply send something - anything - through the cabinet from our end to pique their interest. But the cabinet will need to be bolted shut and guarded after that. Day and night Auror surveillance. Can't destroy it quite yet or - " she made a ripping sound with her mouth, "they'll do Aunt Narcissa in, quick as you please."

"Tonks, dear," Molly scolded her, clucking her tongue.

"Right," Remus was saying with a clap of his hands, "so going forward…"

Tim darted away before they summed up the meeting and went their separate ways. Dinner was beginning and Ann was lingering outside the Great Hall, waiting for him to go in and sit with her. He snagged her hand as he fled from McGonagall's office, tugging her toward the staircase instead.

"Tim, darling, what is it? We'll miss Hermione if we go now."

Tim was almost too breathless to speak. "They're planning something," he whispered to her. "They're going to provoke that monster man to distract him from the - from the events of this coming Sunday."

Ann pulled back against his grip. "Well then we ought to let them. It's their business, after all."

He shook his head. "It's not, Ann. Come along, please."

She huffed and shrugged but followed him up the stairs.

He spoke over his shoulder to her as they went. "They're all out fighting to save our daughter while we stay cooped up in here like a pair of delicate canaries. But it's our responsibility. And I daresay no one can do it better than we can. Perhaps we're small and insignificant enough to succeed in leading the baddies on a merry chase, like field mice disappearing into a hedge."

Ann's face blanched. "Decoys. You want us to leave here and turn ourselves into decoys."

He shook his head. "No, not us, just me. You stay here with Hermione, and let the wizards know I left on my own and wasn't kidnapped, keep them from ruining my plans."

Ann cradled her husband's face in her palms. "What plans, Tim? You're a dentist, darling. A brilliant one, but this talk is madness. We're safe here. Hermione is too. There's nothing more for us to do."

He started up the stairs again, her hand in his. "There is, Ann. I heard them. The wizarding people, they're looking for a distraction but can't think of anything compelling enough that won't put Narcissa Malfoy's life in danger - or anyone else's, for that matter."

Ann's eyes grew wide. "Cissa?"

"Yes. But if the distraction is just me, on the run in London, in a society I know better than they do, taunting the baddies to come and catch me to ransom for Hermione, I might actually stand a chance of keeping them occupied until Sunday night."

Ann made a scared, strangled sound as she climbed behind him. "But Tim, you don't know them like I do. They rounded me up so easily that morning - "

"That was only because you were caught unawares," he said. "It won't be like that this time. They won't be ambushing me in the garden without warning. It will be me who's leading them along."

"Tim, please don't do this," Ann said. "At least, don't do it alone."

"I have to. I can't risk you, I need you here, and the wizards are too paternalistic to let me even try to help. But I am going to," he said. "I'll let them chase me for our Hermione, and your Cissa, and even for that son-in-law of ours. His father is rubbish. The boy needs us too, the poor blighter."

Ann shook her head, staggering up the last of the seven flights of stairs. "Even if I agreed to all of it, there is no way you could do it, Tim. We don't apparate, we've no car here, and if you try to walk off these school grounds you could roam around the Scottish highlands for days before getting back to civilization."

Tim hushed her, taking her in his arms, the pair of them panting together at the very top of the staircase. Tim stooped to kiss her forehead. "I've just about got that sorted too. Now, I don't know how to explain this, or even if it will work, but I think I can show you. You must come with me to try something."

She held tightly to his waist, her feet rooted to the floor. "Try what, Tim? Honestly."

"Into this room, here. Come with me, Ann, to try some magic for our little girl."


	40. Chapter 40

**A/N: Keep reading, my bestest readers. Remember that this story has a guaranteed happy ending! Thank you for all your comments and kindness.**

The old shop had been closed for hours, the lights extinguished, the layer of dust settled back into place, everything silent save the delicate metal click of a handle turning and a clasp opening. A foot clad in a quiet-soled trainer stepped out of a wood and metal cabinet and onto the planks of the creaky floor. The clasp clicked again as the door to the cabinet was eased closed.

The trainers tiptoed quickly and lightly across the floor, each board moaning beneath them, before coming to a stop at the glass door leading outside. It was locked from the inside with an oversized padlock. Doctor of Dental Surgery, Tim Granger, was expert in working with tiny metal hooks and probes in small spaces and would have the lock picked open in seconds - if only it had a keyhole. No doubt, it wanted opening with a wand and a spell.

Ruddy wizards.

Tim stood sweating in the dark shop. He had to find some way out, and fast. If what he overheard in Hogwarts that afternoon was right, this was the second most dangerous place in all of Britain for him at this moment. And this wasn't just Britain, this was wizarding Britain - disorienting, incomprehensible, completely mad. If he stayed here, Tim knew he wouldn't last a day. This whole insane plan depended on him drawing the Death Eaters out of their element and into his - the Muggle world where they would be lost and confused, their clothing and manners drawing attention and alarm, while Tim himself would be adept and anonymous. He just had to escape.

Even non-magical people have figured out how to make glass nearly impossible to shatter by hand. Still, the shop's glass front door seemed like the surest route out. But he'd need something strong that he could swing to break through it.

Lit only by the luminous white of the street light outside, the shop was clearly full of weapons and clubs. Tim was reaching for one - a mace with a massive iron head - when he stopped. He'd been in this neighbourhood before - this Diagon Alley - and of course he'd never been able to relax here. This shop, however, felt exceptionally tense and wrong - cursed - as if every object in it had a tiny, evil intelligence about it that wished him harm. Tim stooped to take up the rug he had been standing on, wrapped it around his hand, and only then lifted the mace from its place on the rack.

He might have just imagined the faraway echo of a shriek as the mace came free in his hand. It was heavier than it looked. Luckily, Tim worked with his hands all day, and he was able to grip the shaft through the rug and heft it over his shoulder.

It wasn't a wand Tim had waved, but the padlock truly did shriek, preserving itself from a good smashing by clanging open when the shadow of the mace fell over it. Evil intelligences are often cowardly ones as well.

Ruddy wizards.

The padlock had made enough noise to rouse shuffling footsteps on the floor above Tim's head. Someone was trying to call out but falling into a fit of coughing instead. Tim nudged the padlock from the door and hopped out of its way as it seemed to aim itself at his feet as it fell to the floor. He leaned the mace against the wall and let himself outside into the cold night air, carefully closing the door behind him before darting down the lane.

Tim Granger was gone by the time Borgin found his way down the stairs, conjuring all the lights to full brightness, scanning the aisles and counters of his shop with his own specially modified secrecy sensor. He stayed up almost until the morning came, searching everywhere but finding no inventory missing, no traces of any outside magic. Confirmed: since he closed up shop that evening, no other wizard had been inside it.

At the front door, the lock was on the floor and a mace was out of the rack, but nothing else had been moved. Must have been a ghost, he reasoned. Spectral static, mischief that flared to life and played itself out just as quickly. Nothing but a bother.

Whatever had happened, the most precious piece in the shop, young Master Malfoy's vanishing cabinet, was still pristine. If the Greyback creature came to check on it, he would find it well cared for, and leave old Borgin in peace. And this was Borgin's chief concern. He folded up his secrecy sensor, and went back to bed.

Out in Knockturn Alley, Tim Granger ducked from doorway to doorway, moving toward the brighter streetlights which he hoped would be Diagon Alley itself. If he could get there, he could get to that pub Arthur always insisted on drinking at - that Leaky Cauldron with the brick wall that opened up on the rest of London.

After six trips in and out of here, Tim remembered which brick in the wall to press to open it up. What he didn't remember was that the pub would be closed this early in the morning. There was nothing in the small courtyard outside of it but a dustbin, and nothing to do but hop inside it and wait for signs of activity inside the pub as the day dawned. For the first time in his life, Dr. Timothy Granger caught a few hours of exhausted sleep in a dustbin before making good his escape into Muggle London.

* * *

Professor Dumbledore descended from the spiral staircase into the third floor corridor, all set for his breakfast, hoping the prunes would be freshly stewed, when he met Ann Granger pacing in front of the gargoyle.

"Dr. Granger," he greeted her, warm and twinkling. "Yes, I had heard you were in the castle. Delighted to have you here. Elated to see you safe and sound."

"To be sure," she said, quick to move past pleasantries. "Professor, I must speak to you in private and at once."

For a moment, he kept perfectly motionless before he began to nod. "I see."

"You may as well call the others," she said as he led her past the gargoyle. "Minerva and Snape and whoever else is working at keeping Hermione and Draco safe until Sunday."

Dumbledore turned to face her. "Something has happened."

"Yes."

His eyes drifted upward, fixed on the empty air above them, over the tops of his half-moon spectacles. "Dr. Granger," he said, a rumble replacing the twinkle, "will your husband be joining us this morning?"

She gave her head one decisive shake. "He will not."

"I see," he said again, reaching into his pocket to press his thumb against a large dull coin.

Minutes later, everyone Ann had asked for, with the addition of a young woman in an Auror's uniform introduced to her simply as Tonks, and a man named Remus with a ghastly scar like claw-marks across his face, were all seated in Dumbledore's office as Ann explained how Tim had made himself into a decoy to lead the Death Eaters away from Draco and Hermione, stealing out of the school in the dead of night through a cabinet he found in a place Ann was calling the attic.

The entire room was dumbfounded. None of the plans any of them had thought of to distract the Dark Lord from the threat of the matrimonial charm had included sending his legions chasing off after a helpless, solitary Muggle, even if he was the father of one of the bravest, most clever, most skilled students the school has seen in years.

Minerva figured out where to begin before anyone else. "Dr. Granger, I hate to be indelicate, but are you quite sure your husband survived the passage through the vanishing cabinet?"

"Oh yes," Ann said, still not grasping how dangerous his use of it had been. "Tim used a phone box to leave a message on the answer phone at home early this morning, once he made it back to London. I used the school's Muggle-born Student Phone - the one Hermione uses to call us - to check it."

Tonks and Remus exchanged horrified looks. "The cabinet works?"

"Of course it does. A live bird flew out of it when Tim first discovered it," Ann said, "so he assumed things came and went from it as they pleased."

Dumbledore was nodding gravely. "He took a great risk, which, thank the stars, was answered with great luck."

Tonks sprang to her feet, her blue hair fading to a dull brown. "There's no way they could have failed to notice the cabinet is operational. Is there?" She seemed to be asking Remus but before he could answer she said, "No, they're not that stupid - oh, maybe they are. It's just Borgin watching the thing, after all. Or maybe it only works in one direction, from here to there. Or else - excuse me Professor." Tonks raced back toward the spiral staircase, leaving to secure the cabinet, whether the Death Eaters understood what it could now do or not.

Remus stood up as if to follow her, but Dumbledore waved him back into his chair.

"Impressive," Dumbledore said, "that Dr. Granger found his way not only out of Hogwarts, then out of Borgin and Burkes, and finally out of Diagon Alley to a phone box. And all before Tom Riddle even knows to look for him. Two more nights remain before the matrimonial charm can be cast. I wish I could tell whether Dr. Granger will be able to sustain the chase once Tom knows there is a chase to be had."

"Shall we send someone from the Order to tail him? Protect him from arm's length?" Remus asked. "If only Padfoot was here - "

"He would lead them directly to Dr. Granger," Snape finished. "There's nothing inconspicuous about a massive black hound in the city."

"Right of course, Severus. No, any help from us would negate Dr. Granger's greatest advantage," Dumbledore said, "which is to be, if you'll pardon me Ann, unremarkable. In his own element, Tim is hard to detect, especially for Tom Riddle and his friends. Muggle detection and management have never been part of Riddle's plans. He is willing to mow them down when they wander into his line of fire, but as for strategic attacks on them - he considers such concerns beneath him. Ann was far more clever and resourceful than he imagined. And it is for precisely that reason that she is free and sitting here with us now."

"And he still won't have learned to stop underestimating us?" Ann asked.

Dumbledore chuckled, but sadly. "No lesson could teach him what the prejudices of his wicked mind will not let him perceive. This is the root of much of the tragedy in our world, Dr. Ann. But today, it benefits us."

"So we have only two choices then?" Remus resumed. "Either we retrieve Dr. Granger ourselves, or we let him run?"

"I'd prefer it if we didn't talk about my husband as if he were a naughty puppy," Ann said.

Dumbledore bowed in her direction. "Of course not, Dr. Granger. Forgive us."

"Indeed, Madam Doctor," Remus said. "I myself tend to prickle at comparisons of humans to canines. Please excuse me."

Ann nodded. "Of course."

"If," Snape interjected, "we restrain ourselves from interfering, then Dr. Granger's plan can only be effective if the Dark Lord knows to give chase. And in that case, I ought to visit Malfoy Manor to alert him. Don't you agree, Professor?"

"What do you think, Dr. Granger?" Dumbledore asked Ann.

She nodded. "Yes. It's what Tim wants."

"I leave it to you, Severus," Dumbledore said. "Tell him only that Dr. Granger has left the castle for London."

"And what shall we tell Miss Granger?" McGonagall asked. "We can see now where her admirable, though impulsive bravery comes from. She is a credit to both of you, Dr. Granger. But I'm afraid her energies need to be directed at the matrimonial charm at this moment, rather than at flying off to rescue her father, which she will be naturally inclined to do."

"Oh no, she musn't do that," Ann agreed. "I've stayed behind here to make excuses for Tim. He was cross about the wedding when last Hermione spoke with him. I could tell her he only got more so and has gone off to clear his head somewhere and she shouldn't expect to see him until Sunday. She'll be unhappy but she won't panic."

"Tell her he's with me," Remus said. "I live away from Hogwarts, the full moon is weeks away, and I should hope that Hermione trusts me by now."

Ann nodded. "Cooling off with Remus Lupin, no full moon - however you like it."

Minerva smoothed her skirts. "I wasn't going to bother fussing over the small details of a wedding but perhaps we ought to, Dr. Granger, to keep Hermione occupied. Draco as well."

Ann frowned. "What do you mean, Minerva? Dress, flowers, seating plan, all of that nonsense?"

She nodded. "If you can manage it, under the circumstances."

Ann sighed. "Oh, go on then."

"Well planned, everyone," Dumbledore said. "You may all go about your assignments. And Remus, do see if Nymphadora requires any assistance. I hear no explosions so I assume all is well for now."

Ann kept her seat as the rest stood to leave, her adrenaline rush finally flagging, her heart rate slowing a little for the first time since Tim dragged her up the stairs to the Room of Hidden Things the night before. The slowing brought with it a wave of exhaustion.

She lifted her head to find Dumbledore twinkling at her again. "Dr. Granger," he said, "while I cannot send a visible guard to accompany your husband, the trust I have over Hogwarts's student extends to their immediate families and allows me - well, special insight into how your husband fares." He leaned over his desk. "I cannot be with him, but neither can I be kept from him. Take some solace in that, if you can."

She smiled wanly at him, forcing herself to stand. "Thank you, Professor. I'm off to meet my daughter."

* * *

When Snape stepped through the front doors of Malfoy Manor, late in the afternoon, Narcissa was not in her usual place, seated at the grand piano at the bottom of the staircase, as he hoped she would be. There was no sign of life in the entrance of the house but Peter Pettigrew mincing toward him.

"The master has not yet begun receiving supplicants today," Pettrigrew was saying.

Snape nodded. "Very well. I will see to Madam Malfoy's injuries until my Lord calls."

"Yes, this way - "

"I know my way, Wormtail. Now get out of it."

Upstairs, Snape's steps slowed as he moved toward the door of Narcissa's bed chamber. Surely someone would have sent word if she'd taken ill again. All must be well. Yes, there could be no need for his colour to be so high, his breath so shallow as he rapped on the door.

It opened for him but he didn't advance inside until he heard Narcissa call out an invitation. "Yes, I'm here."

She sat at her vanity, brushing her hair, wearing a satin dressing gown that exposed the scar healing on her decolletage. "Severus," she said, watching him in her mirror as he entered the room. Her look of surprise curved into a smile. "It can't be Sunday already? No, it is not. But how can that be true after you stormed out of here just a day ago swearing not to return until Sunday?"

The door closed itself behind him. "I have not come to play, Madam Malfoy."

"You couldn't stay away but it's still Madam Malfoy, is it?" she smirked.

It was the prettiest smirk he had seen in ages but Snape's frown deepened anyway. "I have come to inform the Dark Lord that the situation at Hogwarts has changed."

All playful coyness disappeared from Narcissa's demeanor. "Draco - "

"Is quite safe," Snape finished. "But we have learned that Miss Granger's father, who until last night had been within the protection of the castle, has left."

"Left?" she echoed. "Ann's husband - why would he - ?"

Her scar throbbed painfully, and she raised a hand to it, her shoulders heaving as her breath laboured. She looked like she might faint, and without stopping to deliberate on the wisdom of it, Snape strode across the floor, reaching out as if to hold her upright.

She held him back with the tips of her fingers pressed against his chest. "Ann's husband - isn't it marvelous, Severus? This is what a father is meant to be. He's thrown himself out into the void, into the hands of the darkest power known to any of us at this time, and all in order to protect his child, regardless of how hopeless it is." She raised her face to look into Snape's, her features twisting into a snarl, swearing. "Lucius, bloody useless pureblood Lucius Malfoy - a father who has thrown his son to the Dark Lord while he saves his own life. Lucius Malfoy, disgraced, oh yes, but alive in prison while Ann's Muggle husband risks everything for their Mudblood daughter."

"Hush, Cissa," Snape said, gripping her upper arms in each of his hands. "There is nothing to be gained by such ugly talk. Whatever kind of man Lucius may be, he is the only husband you have and it does not bear speaking this way."

As he spoke, Naricssa raised her fingertips from his chest to touch his lips as he formed the words, his voice growing quieter, the words coming more slowly as he struggled to attend to anything but their pressure against his mouth. He was surrendering to her again, as he had the night he stayed in her bed, keeping her warm and safe through the night. He let her touch him, let her look at him, her feelings completely unguarded.

He told himself he was only serving himself, and the Order, and Draco as he collected this moment to show the Dark Lord in the occulmency he knew he would need when Wormtail called him in to see him, minutes from now. To collect the moment, to deepen his memory, he indulged in reveling in the sensation of her ethereally smooth and soft fingers against his lips, the sound of her breath as her shoulders rose and fell, the sight of the glistening sheen over her eyes as she fought her tears, the smell of narcissus perfume mingled with an earthy undertone that he now recognized as the scent of her skin. If he spoke a single word, he would taste her fingers...

He turned his face away. "You don't care for me," he said. "You don't want another husband, you want a bodyguard - the cold, courtly love of a knight who will die for you but never touch you. And you have it already, Narcissa. I have already made the vow."

She reached into the narrow space left between them, taking his wrist as she had that gloomy day in Spinner's End when he pledged his life for her child's. This time, she lifted his hand to press the pads of his fingertips against her closed mouth, drawing him in to touch her, even after he'd told her he never would. Light as a breath, he traced the bow of her lip, usually painted red, now left pink and natural beneath his touch.

But when he spoke, he said, "Lucius is not gone. He may yet return to this house, the Dark Lord's useful idiot once again."

"And I his idiot consort," she said, dropping her hand away from Snape's face.

"His saving grace," Snape corrected, withdrawing his fingers from her lips.

She bowed her head. "No more grace. He is lost."

Snape sighed, his breath ragged. "Not to Draco. And if I were anything to you other than a knight-protector, Draco would never forgive me."

The doorknob was rattling, metal on metal as Peter Pettigrew tried to open it to call Snape to the Dark Lord.

* * *

To enter into an audience with the Dark Lord was to step into a furious onslaught of legilimency. Snape was braced for it as he came into the manor's drawing room, prepared to misdirect with images of Narcissa Malfoy's growing reliance on him.

The Dark Lord cackled at the sight of it. "Ah, yes, Severus. My act of discipline toward Madam Malfoy was an opportunity for you, was it not? You tended her injuries, and like a wounded animal, she will now follow you anywhere. Most interesting. What do you say, Wormtail, shall we bring Lucius back from Azkaban and see how this plays out?"

"As my Lord wishes," Pettigrew simpered.

"What, you don't think it would be amusing, Severus?" the Dark Lord marveled. Snape was so like him, in so many ways, that he had always assumed Snape, like himself had never loved anyone either. It had to be true, after what Snape had told him about the prophecy and Lily Evans's son.

"I'm afraid I have come on a matter of some urgency, my Lord," Snape said. "I must defer the pleasure of toying with the Malfoys for another time."

"Very well," the Dark Lord conceded. "But come here, Wormtail. Collect this memory. I may have use for it later. Severus, if we may."

"Certainly, my Lord." Snape bent toward Wormtail as he raised his wand and drew the memory of Narcissa's touch out of Snape's mind and into a tiny glass vial.

Straightening up, Snape continued. "You see, the Mudblood girl who cast the love charm that has been troubling my Lord, her ignorant Muggle father left the safety of Hogwarts last night. He is at large, alone, and completely unprotected. If we can get to him before the Order recovers him, he may be useful."

The Dark Lord was laughing again. "Excellent, Severus. Excellent news. Yes, we will hunt him. We have been without sport for so long. I think I may send Bella herself. She has a gift for such things. Oh yes, the vendetta will be personal, still smarting as she is from the Mudblood's mother's escape. Fetch her, Wormtail."

When he was gone, Snape knelt beside the Dark Lord's armchair, unwinding the bandages from his damaged hand. The withering injury had progressed halfway to his elbow and though he still hissed and winced as Snape treated it, his spirits were high. "A matter of hours, Severus - hours! And then we shall ransom the captured father for the Granger witch, spill her blood on these hearth stones, and I shall be free of this nuisance."

The wound was a great deal more than a nuisance. Anyone who had seen the Dark Lord since he marked Draco Malfoy last autumn knew it. But Snape only nodded his head and said, "Of course, my Lord. This trifling matter will not even be remembered a day from now."

He huffed. "It will be remembered by young Master Malfoy. And it will remind him to finish the repair of my cabinet or lose his mother as well." He watched Snape as he spoke the threat, eyes keen to see if Severus recoiled at the mention of more violence toward Madam Malfoy.

Snape did not flinch at all.

* * *

"They're trying to distract us," Hermione said, tossing a parchment onto the top of her favourite library table. "There is simply no need for a seating plan at a wedding with so few guests. Practical women like Mum and McGonagall know this, but they're busying us with it anyway. Honestly, everyone there will be from the Order except for Pansy and a few teachers."

Draco had taken the guest list and was reading it himself, his eyebrows raised high. "Not the crowd of wedding guests I once imagined for himself, I must say."

She sighed heavily enough to blow her hair away from her face. "I'm sorry, darling. It's worse for you, isn't it?"

He grinned at her, leaning over the arm of his chair, into her space. "Not at all," he said as he kissed her. "I never dreamed I'd get married without my parents, and that is regrettable. But it's the only thing that is."

She kissed the end of his nose. "That may be exactly what they're trying to distract us from - the fact that out of our four parents, only one will be there with us."

"Still no word from your dad?"

"No, nothing," she said. "They say he's off with Remus, so he can sulk somewhere safe. It's not like him, though."

Draco shook his head. "Safe with a werewolf. More of that storied Order of the Phoenix logic."

"You be quiet about the Order."

"You make me."

Hermione was about to tackle Draco when a familiar voice cleared its throat, somehow making itself heard through Draco's passageway spell which had always worked so well to keep them uninterrupted in the library.

"None of your passageway spells, Mr. Malfoy," the voice was calling.

He reversed it and the speaker appeared in front of them. "Sorry, Madam Pince."

She wagged her finger at them. "The headmaster warned me to watch out for anything inappropriate going on between the two of you in my library. I thought he was mistaken and I must say, Miss Granger, I am disappointed in you."

Hermione's face was crimson. "Sorry, Madam Pince. We were only going over some lists for Professor McGonagall."

She tutted. "Then you have nothing to hide and no need for concealment spells."

They fled into the corridor, embarrassed but laughing. "Where are we supposed to work now?" Hermione moaned.

Draco broke into a wide smile. "Let's go upstairs and see how the clean-up of our married quarters is coming along."

But when they arrived on the seventh floor, the door to their quarters was locked with a bolt marked with the seal of Dumbledore himself. Draco pulled on the handle before kicking the door.

"Our room is wearing a chastity belt," he said. "Can you believe that? Dumbledore doesn't trust me. The purity clause expires in two days but he doesn't think I can last that long. He's making sure I don't lure you in there and…" He bent his head to growl loudly and wetly against her neck.

She screamed and shoved, laughing and ordering him to stop.

"Fine, I've stopped," he said. "And Dumbledore may be right about me after all. Let's head back to where there's plenty of people for a bit."

"Wait," she said, peering further down the corridor. "That doorway there. It's the Room of Requirement. Why is it visible right now? What do we require?"

He blanched, letting go of her. "The cabinet. Hermione, go find your mother. Keep her safe. I have to check on the cabinet."

She grabbed his hand. "Well, you're not checking it alone."

"Hermione - "

"I'm not being romantic, Draco. Just practical. Don't be a Harry, going off on your own. If anything's gone wrong and you can't get away, I'll need to let everyone else know."

They crept down the corridor, listening for signs of activity - perhaps a scuffle. He pushed on the door and peeked inside. The room seemed empty but for one tiny bird flitting from rafter to rafter above their heads. He stepped inside.

"Someone's taken the dust cover off of it," he whispered back at her. "It's standing out in the open."

She stepped inside behind him, her wand drawn, following as he approached the bared cabinet. He was close enough to touch it when she heard him laugh.

"Well," he said, "I don't know what to make of it, but I'm caught."

She leaned around him to see. Like the door to their married quarters, the vanishing cabinet was locked with a bolt, a nearly identical bolt also bearing the seal of Dumbledore himself.


	41. Chapter 41

Tim Granger spent rush hours underground, on the crowded platforms where the trains came and went through the low, stuffy, narrow tubes beneath the city. Underground, there was no way to be spotted by anyone searching for him from the air. That eliminated one of the dark wizards' known advantages. They had come by air when they came for Ann.

He was particularly drawn to platforms with transit employees in fluorescent vests and megaphones. If they announced, "Plenty of room in the rear cars..." then he moved to the crowded front cars. If they said, "Another train will be arriving within three minutes. There is no need to injure yourselves…" he was sure to cram himself through the doors anyway.

While he was on the run, Tim Granger couldn't go near his surgery, but he was still a dentist, accustomed to keeping close company with the moist, foul-smelling parts of people of all kinds. The press of humans in the tubes hardly fazed him at all. He relied on the dark wizards being as repulsed by non-magical people as everyone said they were, and flung himself as deeply as he could into the midst of his fellow Londoners.

The nights would be the more dangerous, when the crowds thinned, making the tubes more like dead ends with long lines of sight, places to be trapped in rather than refuges. Once the skies darkened enough to hide the wizards' movements overhead, they could appear out of anywhere without warning. And the night also brought with it Tim's own fatigue. He had slept less than two hours the previous night, and he'd passed them inside the Leaky Cauldron's dustbin.

He thought about disguising himself, but did the dark wizards even know what he looked like? Who, exactly, would they be searching for? How could they know which of the thousands of average-sized Englishman with short, tufty brown hair was their man?

He didn't know the answers to these questions but he did know the answers to every question on the quiz playing out in the busy pub where he had eaten supper. The rest of the patrons were now mid-way through their quiz night. Tim had said nothing, though it was exquisitely painful for him to do so. It felt like those times back in school when his teachers would tell him he needed to give the other children a chance and refused to call on him anymore. Why hadn't he and Ann gone to quiz nights before? When all of this was over -

Yes, when all of this was over - this situation where the best case scenario was for everything to go back to normal except that their darling, promising warrior princess scholar would be married to a sixteen year old boy.

Tim sighed so loud and long into the untouched half pint of lager he'd ordered an hour before that the barman asked if he was alright. He hadn't been drinking, wanting to stay alert. But constant vigilance was exhausting, and he reckoned he might actually last longer if he relaxed a bit.

He drained his glass with a "Cheers, mate," and set off to get lost in the evening crowds of the theatre district.

* * *

By the time the last of the Friday night rush hour was over, Bellatrix Lestrange, along with Corban Yaxley and Amycus Carrow, had met in London, in the car park behind the Granger Dental Surgery.

Yaxley had just come off a long week at the ministry and was quite cross. "Even a bloody Muggle won't have been stupid enough to run off and hide in a building with his name writ large in the front window," he sneered.

"He might be," Bellatrix spat back at him. "He was stupid enough to leave Hogwarts in the first place, wasn't he?"

"I'm not sure he was," Yaxley muttered. "I think we may be on a fool's errand."

Carrow was speaking up, shrill as ever. "You would call our Dark Lord a fool!"

"Oh, don't start with that again, Carrow," Yaxley said. "Who was it who gave us this lead? It was that slimy Snape, wasn't it? Dumbledore's pet toad? We do nothing to honor our Lord's cause by trotting off like cattle incapable of critical reasoning. We ought to be guarding him from a toad like Snape."

"You would criticize - "

"Shut up!" Bella snapped at the pair of them. "We have been sent, and we will obey. How long can it take? Of course the Muggle beast isn't here. But his most precious goodies are all inside, right where he left them. Might be some clues for how to roust him out. Or there might not be. Either way there's this lovely plate glass."

She whipped her wand and the entire front window exploded into the street. She knew to shield herself from the blast but Carrow barely got his shield spell up in time and Yaxley was so late in raising his that he was left bleeding from his scalp in two places.

"Stars take you, Bellatrix Lestrange," he hollered at her.

She was already through the smashed window and inside the surgery, dumping out trays of sterilized instruments, grinding glass vials beneath her heel, throwing over the dental chairs with a flick of her wand, snapping off knobs, venting pressurized gases into the office air.

Yaxley followed her as soon as his head wounds were sorted, finding her laughing uncontrollably in the tiny room where the bottles of gas were stored. She was sitting on the floor, slumped against a door, hysterical.

"What have you done?" Yaxley demanded, lifting his cloak to cover his face, warding off the hiss of nitrous oxide. "You've let out some kind of Muggle medicine and drugged yourself."

Bellatrix screamed with laughter, slapping at Yaxley's legs. He grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her into the waiting room, where fresh air was blowing through the gaping hole where the glass had been.

"Lookit," she said as he dragged her along, raking her fingers through the dental instruments she'd strewn on the floor. "Look at all the tiny metal wands this Muggle keeps. Useless, every one. It would be sad if it weren't so funny."

Yaxley sat her up against the wall, Carrow gawking at them from behind the reception desk. "Listen, you," Yaxley said. "You know the directive. We are not yet at the point where we can openly flout the Statute on Secrecy. It will come soon, but not yet. And so - Bellatrix, listen - "

She was able to focus her eyes on him now, but not quite able to listen. "Look at you, Corban Yaxley, with your long yellow hair. Aren't you ashamed to be done up like a cheap knockoff of Lucius bloody Malfoy?"

"Madam Lestrange," he said, nearly shouting. "In the name of the Dark Lord, I implore you to listen."

Her sneer collapsed into a pout.

Yaxley went on. "We cannot go rampaging through Muggle London like a pack of wild animals. We are, after all, the more civilized beings. Restraint, Madam Lestrange. Until we have made off with the Muggle, we must show restraint. The Dark Lord only promised you free rein with the Muggle after he is conveyed back to the manor intact."

The gas wore off quickly, and Bellatrix was moving to stand, shaking the dust and debris out of her skirts. In the distance, a siren had begun to wail. Someone had reported the break-in at the surgery to the Muggle Aurors.

"We must go," Carrow said. "Where shall we go?"

"Back to their shabby little house," Yaxley said, "to break in gently, and look for something to lead us along."

* * *

Hermione had not wanted wedding attendants, and she told her mother and Professor McGonagall precisely that. "It's not that kind of wedding, Mum. It's an ancient rite from the tenth century. It would only call for bridesmaids if there was a maypole involved."

Ann and McGonagall had accepted her outright refusal to make a seating plan, but they would not relent on the question of bridesmaids and groomsmen, reasoning that, since Harry had to be involved anyway, they may as well make it less strange for everyone if they organizing him into a proper wedding party along with the few other young people who had any idea the ceremony was happening. In addition to Harry, this meant Ron, Ginny, and Pansy.

"It's still odd, though," Hermione complained to Draco on their way to meet their attendants in the restricted section of the library. "I feel like - like all these ridiculous wedding details are a smokescreen hiding something we're missing, but I can't think of what. The only thing that's missing is Dad, and that's sad but not - suspicious. Is it?"

Draco raised his eyebrows as he held open the library door for her. "I don't know. Your parents have never deliberately deceived you, have they?"

Hermione smirked. "Do wizards not have Father Christmas?"

Ron, Pansy, and Ginny were seated at the table in the restricted section, the Mitrian texts pulled off the shelves and spread open on the table. Pansy was already frowning at the clothing the people in the illustrations were wearing while Ron and Ginny were droning on about quidditch. Hermione sat down to interrupt all of it with an equally inane conversation about flowers and dresses.

"Clearly, the flower of choice has to be narcissus," Pansy said. "It's a tribute to Madam Malfoy, which will be extremely touching since she won't be there in person."

Ginny whistled. "Wow, they really do train up Slytherin girls to be the perfect wives. Listen to Parkinson, she's got her mother-in-law manners sorted already."

Pansy faked a smile. "Yes, well, we can't all be lucky enough to be dating an orphan."

The Weasley siblings howled and even Draco himself winced.

"No, Pansy love, no," Ron said, squashing her cheeks and kissing her.

"Sorry, old habits," she said, taking his arm and resting her head penitently on his shoulder. "At least I didn't say it in front of Harry."

"Where is Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Another urgent Chosen One meeting with Dumbledore," Ginny said, somehow nonplussed.

Ron was shaking his head. "I can't believe it's Harry and me who'll be standing up with Draco Malfoy at his wedding - no offense, Malfoy."

"It's fine," Malfoy said.

"It isn't ideal," Hermione said, "but it's too soon to risk trusting Draco's friends with news of the matrimonial charm. All of their dads are Death Eaters."

Draco shifted in his seat. "As is your father-in-law, darling."

Pansy saw he was no longer fine. She coughed and said, "So that's flowers. We'll have narcissus. Now choose a colour."

Hermione blinked. "A colour for what?"

"For everything," Ginny said.

Hermione blinked again. "Well, since narcissus flowers are white, let's stick with that."

There was a roar as everyone began protesting at once that she couldn't choose white.

"Think, Hermione. If Parkinson and I are standing up with you wearing white dresses, it's going to look like a triple wedding," Ginny explained.

"What's wrong with that, Gin?" Ron smirked. "Harry's been keen on joining the family since his first Christmas at Hogwarts. That's a long enough engagement. And, I don't know Pansy, I can think of worse things than finishing up school in a room of our own up on the seventh floor."

Ginny swatted at him but he didn't even notice, inadvertently moving out of her way as he grabbed at Pansy who was muttering, "What are you like, Ronald."

"How are the married quarters coming along anyway?" Ginny asked as she gave up landing a hit on Ron. "Nice and cozy?"

"Oh, they're keeping it under wraps until the wedding day," Hermione said, blushing slightly, not willing to admit they were no longer trusted to go there.

Draco was laughing at her, nuzzling his face into her hair. "Something like that."

But the longer he thought about the seventh floor, the more uneasy he became. They needed to end this ludicrous meeting and find Snape to ask about the bolt on the vanishing cabinet. He hadn't been in his office when they went rushing down after discovering the cabinet had been tampered with, but he might be back by now. Or maybe he had gone because some new, awful thing had happened to Draco's mother at the manor.

He shifted in his chair again. "Let's just pick a different colour and be done with it, yeah?" he prodded.

"Easy," Ron said. "The other colour in a narcissus flower is yellow, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I won't have yellow," Hermione frowned. "It doesn't suit Draco. And he's the real beauty in the family."

Ron shuddered openly, but Pansy and Ginny made no arguments.

"Alright, then I'll pick," Draco said.

The Weasleys looked at each other across the table and said in unison, "Green."

"No, not green. It's a shade of blue: periwinkle, like the brightest blue of the sky at sunrise. I always wanted it as part of our wedding."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Oh alright, Draco. I'll pester McGonagall about alter the dress for the wedding."

Pansy jumped in her seat. "What dress? I thought we had to wear these medieval smocks."

Hermione sighed. "McGonagall said that would be best but the most important thing in casting the charm is our states of mind when it's done. So the happier everyone is, the better. And if you all think you're pretty, you'll be happier. Our collective happiness - it's vital to this magic, and I think that might be a reason why my dad may stay away."

Ginny patted her on the back. "He'll come around, Hermione."

Ron was thinking. "If you can convince McGonagall that the girls don't need to dress like ancient nuns, we'll look all the more like prats if we're done up like monks. Can't we just wear our dress robes?"

"No," everyone said, remembering Ron at the Yule Ball.

"Well, maybe," Draco added. "If you can stomach borrowing some from me."

Ron shuddered again but Pansy elbowed him, saying, "Come on, Ron. It's better than a hairshirt."

Draco was standing up. "Bring Potter and meet me in the quidditch changing rooms tomorrow and we'll sort it out," he said to Ron. Then he turned and took Hermione's hand. "I still need to meet Professor Snape, darling. Sorry I can't stay."

"Oh - " she said, flustered as he kissed her hand and stepped over the rope to leave them.

"You'll be alright without him for a bit," Ron said. "You completely ignored each other for the first two years you were together. An hour or two apart ought to be easy now."

Ginny was laughing. "That's rich, Ron, you giving advice against being too clingy - "

Draco lost track of their voices as he left the library. He had emerged in the corridor, and was turning hard toward the Entrance Hall and the staircase to Snape's dungeon study when a hand grabbed his robes.

"Oi, Draco. Have a word with old cousin Tonks."

Draco spun around, startled, faced with his Aunt Andromeda's grown Auror of a daughter. He tried to remember if he'd ever actually spoken to his first and only cousin, this Nymphadora Tonks, before in his life.

"Hello," was all he said.

"We need to talk about the - the object, in the Room of Hidden Things. You know which one I mean."

His face blanched. "I suppose I do."

She leaned into him, looking nothing like his graceful, elegant mother but striking a somehow familiar chord in him all the same. She was not altogether unlike Aunt Bella, only without the pretentious wickedness. She said, "Just so you know, the headmaster has locked it up tight. And I've got Aurors watching it day and night. So you'd best not tamper with it any more. It's out of your hands."

"Your Aurors aren't very good then," he said. "I had a look at it earlier today and saw the lock for myself."

She nodded. "Yes, I was watching you. We let you see it. And then it was decided we'd better explain."

"What have you explained?" he said. As he said it, he wondered at his tone. All of his initial stiffness toward his cousin was gone. His emotions unfurled themselves for her, even though they were unpleasant. He spoke to her with feeling but without fear. Was this what it was like to speak to a sibling? He went on. "You needn't lock it down. I couldn't mend it. It doesn't work. And if it did work, your locks could never hold them back."

She took a step closer, close enough for him to see the bright pink roots of her hair. "It does work, Draco. We know for a fact that it does, but we're not sure if they know. They - you know who."

He staggered away from her. "How?" he said. "How could you know unless someone's used it? Used it and then lived to tell?"

She waited as the import of what he'd just said struck him. "Draco," she went on. "No matter what, they must never know."

He was nodding, sweat slicked across his forehead. "If they find out it can work and I haven't told them, they'll kill Mother."

He took one more panicked step away from her, toward the way out of the school.

"Stop, Draco." He felt her tugging on his robes but there must have been a spell involved in it, some kind of Auror trick that made it impossible for him to jerk away. "Snape is there, at the manor with Aunt Narcissa. She's as safe as she can be. You trust him. You know that. And remember, the sentries at the school gate - they've been ordered not to let you out."

He nodded. "You can let me go. I promise I'll wait for Snape here in the castle."

Almost an hour passed before Hermione found him sitting on the floor at the top of Snape's staircase. She stepped up to him, her hand extended, as if to offer to help him to standing.

She looked down the stairwell, to the locked door. "He may not come back until morning," she said.

Draco looked up, hooked his index finger through hers, but made no attempt to stand. "You've spoken with my cousin?"

"Yes."

"Even if he's not coming, will you sit here with me anyway?"

"Of course I will," she said, bending to sit next to him.

But he caught hold of her and pulled her into his lap, his face in the crook of her neck. "You're the only thing that's good," he said against her skin.

She smoothed his hair. "Do you remember the first time this year you were called to answer your Dark Mark, and you came back here after being terrorized and threatened? You knew what you needed to heal yourself that day. Do you remember?"

He sighed. "I needed you to tell me you loved me."

"And I do, Draco," she said. "I love you. It may not always work the way it did that first day, but it will always be true."

She tucked her face into his shoulder, turning to kiss him slowly and sweetly on the neck. She felt him shiver in response, his hold on her tightening, shifting her upward, bringing her to where he could kiss her. And they would sit there, in a quiet but public space, snogging like the teenagers they were. Two more nights remained before they let it all go, taking on adult married life willingly but so early.

* * *

Tim Granger moved from queue to queue, from one theatre to another in Piccadilly Circus, as if he was waiting to buy tickets to a show. In truth, he was only hiding in the crowds. It worked for now, but whether there were still people out and about or not, in a few hours he would have to find somewhere to spend the night. He needed rest to go through the same invisible-man routine tomorrow with the Saturday crowds. He had done his dental training through the British Armed Forces, and had once been a fit, strong young man who could march all day. But that was twenty years ago now.

He swayed on his feet in the queue, all but asleep where he stood. He jolted awake when he heard someone say, "Will you look at that. The Sweeney Todd show must be coming back."

Tim raised his head, looking out over the pavement to three people, a woman and two men dressed in Gothic looking, quasi-Victorian clothing. They were poring over a theatre magazine as if it was a street map, even though it was an outdated edition, like one from the top of the pile by the garden door at home, the pile he and Ann kept forgetting to bring to the recycler.

Real theatre people would take no notice of such a thing.

He sank deeper into the queue, but not so far that he couldn't watch the trio strolling across the pavement, glaring at the crowds. As he watched, the man with the long, pale ponytail reached out and stopped someone passing close by them. The smaller man held up a square of paper while the three of them compared the man's face to the image on the paper. From the back, Tim noticed, the average-sized Englishman with short, tufty brown hair, looked an awful lot like him.

Ruddy wizards.


	42. Chapter 42

Tim Granger ducked and bobbed along with the movements of the man next to him in the queue outside a theatre, keeping himself hidden from the trio of dark wizards who were beginning to attract a crowd on the pavement of Piccadilly Circus. Dressed in their wizard clothing, they looked like a roving publicity troupe for a newly opened show - like a new staging of _Sweeney Todd_, or maybe a grungy reimagining of _Les Miserables_.

The wizards stood on the pavement, under the neon and electric lights, glaring at the crowds of people moving down the street. They did nothing but glare long enough for the easily bored, slightly tipsy collection of onlookers to begin to egg them on, shouting songs at them, singing lines about "the worst pies in London" or the much more menacing "music of a people who will not be slaves again."

"What do they mean by it?" Amycus Carrow began to shrill as the trio of wizards moved into fighting formation, their backs to each other, turning in a slow circle. "Why do they hem us in? And what are these slogans they're shouting? How are we to - "

"Shut up, Carrow," Bellatrix Lestrange sneered at him. "I'll make quick work - "

"You will not," Corban Yaxley hissed, grabbing Bellatrix by her wand hand.

She yanked herself free. "You dare to touch me!"

"You dare to expose, in one idiotic swoop, my three years of undercover operations at the Ministry by drawing attention to me while I'm in the company of an escaped convict?" Yaxley countered. "We must go undetected by our own kind and therefore, you must hold your wand."

She stifled a shriek. "If you're so secretive and important, why have you come?"

He spoke through his teeth. "I ask myself the same thing. I am here on the Dark Lord's orders and for no other reason. I suspect, Madam Lestrange, that I am here as your leash."

She let out a loud cackle.

The Muggle audience watched the wizards' faces growing more and more animated, their exaggerated but unintelligible arguing with one another piquing the crowd's interest. The show must be starting, they reasoned, as they gathered in greater numbers. When nothing more happened, the crowd began to clap in rhythm, spurring the performers on.

Tim stood watching from his place in the unmoving queue beneath an awning, his heart pounding. Stupid tourists, in from the suburbs and out of town to make a show of themselves, now making a show of the dangerous wizards sent into the city to hunt him. All of these people were in danger they didn't understand. And the only way they would know it would be either if the wizards lashed out, or if he, Tim Granger, stepped out into the open to sound a warning before it was too late.

But such a warning would almost certainly mean he'd be caught. And that would mean Hermione…

But he and Hermione were only two people, and there had to be at least a hundred people here in the street. The calculation was heartbreaking, but not difficult. Still, he didn't move.

As the wizards turned in their trio, Tim took stock of their expressions, trying to gauge the threat they posed to the crowds. The small man looked frightened, which might make him desperate and prone to overreact. The tall man looked angry but guarded, tightly controlled but like a spring on a trap. His anger seemed equally divided between the crowd and his wizard partners.

The woman was clearly the most dangerous. She looked furious, but in a gleeful, excited way, as if she could hardly wait to get started. She bared her teeth and rolled her eyes, daring the crowds to advance closer, to give her the slightest push before she would run wild over them. She was raking her fingers through her hair, shifting it away from her face to better see what would soon be a battlefield.

Tim could hear her voice from where he stood, over the racket of the singing and clapping. She was still cackling, not like a witch in a Saturday cartoon, but low and eerie like a hag in a horror movie. The sound chilled Tim to his soul. Still laughing, she was drawing in a breath, like a mummer, her eyes tipping back into her head. She was on the attack.

Several things happened, all at once.

Tim Granger threw himself out of the theatre queue, shouting, "No! I'm here!"

The witch had surrendered her sense of sight to her spell and she could not see him - not at that moment. Without touching her wand, she sent out a wave of slow-moving green light, like a poisonous nebula, bursting from her sternum, drifting toward the crowd.

The drunks and lads cheered the light show, but a cry of tight, incredulous fear was rising from the more sensitive people in the gathering.

The large wizard snarled at the witch. He took both her and the smaller man by their wrists and they all seemed to twist and distort before they vanished from view.

And just as the green light was about to wash over the nighttime crowd on Piccadilly Circus, there was a rush of warm wind, like something hot and fiery but unseen had flown through the empty space the wizards had vacated. With it came a sweet, nostalgic smell like sherbet lemon candy. In an instant, these sensations had passed, and green light was gone - neutralized.

The crowd clapped and cheered for this fine finale before dispersing to find something new and better to look at, or maybe something else to drink.

Tim Granger watched the crowd go - all these happy, hapless people. The second phase of the chase had begun: the part he knew he would need to spend away from the crowds he had thought would keep him safe. These wizards must be faced alone.

He slipped down a filthy stairwell, back into the underground, to vanish.

* * *

Yaxley, Carrow, and Lestrange collapsed together on the lawn outside Malfoy Manor, all of them materializing screaming at one another.

"How dare you bring us back to the Dark Lord before our mission is fulfilled?" Bellatrix screeched louder than the rest.

Yaxley bawled a reply almost as loudly. "How dare you jeopardize every other facet of our movement for this single mission? It is not what the Dark Lord intends after years of careful plotting and waiting."

"The Muggle!" Carrow was shrilling, throwing himself between the pair of them, pointing furiously at both. "He was right there in the street, stepping out from under an awning, calling to us just as you attacked the useless masses of them and you took us away."

Yaxley snarled. "No, he can't have been there."

"He was!"

Yaxley paced up and down on the grass, swearing and fuming.

"We would have had him if you weren't such a coward!" Bellatrix spat at him.

"No, we wouldn't have had anything," Yaxley countered. "Not in the pandemonium of the brazen mass murder of all those Muggles. Really, Bellatrix, I rather think I will enjoy hearing you explain this to the Dark Lord. There is no excuse for it but your selfish, undisciplined bloodlust."

At the word "undisciplined," Belltrix cringed. It was the very word the Dark Lord spoke each and every time he punished her.

"They're not murdered," Carrow wailed again. "Did you not see? I saw it as we disapparated. That mangy phoenix from the school came winging between Madam Lestrange's spell and the Muggle horde, sparing them all. Not a single hair singed among the lot of them. They won't have been able to have seen the bloody bird themselves, but it saved them all the same."

Bellatrix swore. "That sneaking, creeping, Muggle-loving headmaster scum."

"Yes, well, he's done us a favour this time," Yaxley said. "Now we can go back to London and round up the Muggle as we were meant to instead of crawling into Malfoy Manor on our hands and knees to plead forgiveness for prematurely exposing our undercover operations at the Ministry, and everything else that comes to light once the Statute of Secrecy is utterly and egregiously flouted."

"Utterly and egregiously flouted," Bellatrix parroted back to him in a mocking nasal voice.

Yaxley turned his back on her and waved both of his hands at the manor. "How am I expected to work under these conditions?"

Carrow's voice was rising again. "You would dare - "

"Shut up!" Yaxley and Lestrange roared at once.

Bellatrix was snatching at both of their wrists at once. "Enough. To London."

And with that, they were back in pursuit.

* * *

Tim went back to the house. If the wizards had already been there clawing through the recycling for theatre magazines, odds were they had moved on from searching for him at home. Sure enough, at home the back door was blasted off its hinges. A message was blinking on the answer phone, the police with an urgent message about a break-in at the surgery.

There was no time to grieve for it now. He recorded a message for Ann to find, letting her know that even though everything they owned was ruined, he was alive. Taking only some food and clothes and his passport, he got into the car. Even if the wizards recognized the car, they couldn't see in the dark, and if he kept off the major motorways, traveling on back lanes instead, he might be able to get out of London on his own, without putting anyone else in danger.

He drove, watching the skies as much as the roads, tense and sinking further into exquisite exhaustion. What happened to the green, evil cloud the witch had sent out to attack the crowd in Piccadilly Circus? It had looked as if it simply dissipated in a gust of wind. Maybe they were helping him - Hermione's people, the good ones. Maybe they were powerful enough to watch over him even as they kept their distance. The idea made him feel a little better, but also more tired than ever. His head nodded over the steering wheel. He needed to sleep or he wouldn't die facing mad evil wizards, but in a car wreck.

Pulling the car under the canopy of a sprawling ancient tree by the side of the road, he fell to sleep. What he did not know, and could not see in the dark or in the winter, without its leaves, was that the tree was a hawthorn - one of the largest and oldest ones in all of Britain. It was a species naturally blessed to provide protection, and to strengthen love. When this tree shed its twigs after windstorms, Garrick Olivander was known to travel here from the city to glean the wood for wands. Its living boughs gave Tim Granger shelter as he slept.

* * *

"It still feels like a smokescreen," Hermione said, hanging up an assortment of Draco's best black dress robes in the Gryffindor quidditch locker room on a Saturday morning when Ravenclaw was playing Hufflepuff and the room was deserted. "All these silly wedding details. It's Mum and McGonagall trying to distract us from something."

Draco couldn't answer, caught up as he was in glancing around the red and gold room lined with championship pennants, keenly uncomfortable. "Why aren't your boyfriends here yet?" He only called Ron and Harry that when he was profoundly annoyed.

She checked her watch. "They aren't even late." She looked up into his face, lovely but exhausted. Outside, the quidditch spectators cheered. "You're just early, darling. And that's because you hardly slept at all last night, didn't you?"

He sighed. "Snape did come back by morning. He wouldn't answer the door when I went to him, but I could hear him inside his study just before dawn. Don't these clever old people realize that the uncertainty of it all upsets us more than whatever it is they're hiding - probably?"

Hermione sighed in return. "I do feel badly for Snape. Between You-know-who and the Order and his vow to your mother, he's in an impossible position."

Draco hummed. "Snape feels different to me lately. Like he can't quite face me and I don't know why. Maybe things are so bad at the manor, he doubts he can go on protecting my mother."

Hermione stamped her foot. "Your mother is not like she was at Christmas. Not if she was able to save my mother. Trust her to be able to be involved in protecting herself. All of You-know-who's talk about her weakness and vulnerability is meant to manipulate you, Draco. Don't believe everything he tells you. But do get some rest before the boys arrive." She pushed him to sit on the bench between the lockers.

He touched the wood with his hands but quickly recoiled, faking a gag. "Can't believe I'm sitting here, where a thousand naked Gryffidor arses have sat."

She swatted his arm. "And here I was, counting on you to like Gryffindor arses. Awfully disappointing - "

She was attempting to flounce saucily away when he snagged her hand and pulled her into his lap. "That is NOT what I meant."

"No?" she said, brushing her nose against his, bouncing slightly in his lap.

"By the stars, Hermione, hold still..." he growled, closing in on her lips with his.

"Defiling our dressing room!" Ron called, pushing through the doors to interrupt them. "What kind of Gryffindor would bring a Slytherin here for a snog? Unthinkable, yeah Pansy?"

He and Pansy exchanged a smirk, revealing exactly what kind of Gryffindor had already thought to do such a thing, days ago.

Ginny came in behind him, groaning. "Can we please get on with it?"

"Why has everyone brought a girl with them?" Draco demanded. "I asked to meet me in a boys' changing room for a reason."

"Come on, Draco," Pansy said. "Hermione's here."

"Well, she's the bride, isn't she?"

"And Ginny's a bridesmaid," Harry said.

"And Pansy and I go everywhere together and refuse to answer for it," Ron finished.

Draco was in an impossible mood so Hermione took over, thrusting robes at Ron and Harry and shoving them toward the showers to change in private.

"I suppose I should ask if Mum and McGonagall have got you dresses?" she asked the girls.

Ginny yawned. "Yeah, Parkinson picked out something for us."

Pansy tossed her head. "Yes, you're both most welcome."

Harry came out of the shower room first, his hands and feet completely swallowed in the sleeves and trouser legs.

Draco rolled his eyes. "What are you playing at Potter?"

He waved the excess fabric in Draco's face. "Right, Malfoy, I've been holding back a growth spurt all this time just so I'd be ready to tick you off this morning."

Pansy was rolling her eyes and moving to get between them and explain how to make everything right but Draco was rising to it himself.

"They're self-tailoring robes," he said, giving the end of each of the sleeves a swift tug like Harry's Aunt Petunia might do with a window blind she wanted raised. With each tug, the sleeves and legs shortened themselves to an appropriate length. Draco kept Harry standing in front of him a minute longer, smoothing the wrinkles on his shoulders and pressing his lapels with his fingers.

The room fell into an amused silence, no sound of anything but Draco's hands moving deftly across the fabric - no affection in his touch, but no violence either.

"And what," Draco said, "is happening with your hair right now?" He flicked at Harry's part, and though Harry's shoulders rose defensively, he didn't flinch out of the way.

"There, Miss Weasley," Draco said, standing back, "how do you like your Chosen One now?"

"That is quite nice," Ginny said, beaming as she twirled Harry in a circle between her hands. "Quite nice indeed."

"Have you both finished?" Harry said. "You know, I have worn dress robes before."

"Yes, they were a dark bottle green," Ginny was quick to say.

"You remem - "

She batted her eyelashes. "Of course I do, Harry. I still had a crush on you in my third year, so naturally I remember exactly what you looked like marching into the Triwizard Tournament Yule Ball with Parvati Patil on your arm. Just like you, I'm sure, remember exactly what I was wearing and who I went with. Don't you?"

Draco had lost interest in Harry and was moving to cradle Hermione from behind, his chin on her shoulder. "Hermione was wearing this pink ruffly thing with the loveliest pair of crystal dancing shoes," he said, kissing her ear as he finished.

Ginny looked at Harry, her eyebrows raised expectantly but tauntingly as he turned very white, blinking at her, starting to stammer.

That was when Ron came shambling into the room in a set of fine, black, contemporary dress robes.

Pansy gasped.

Harry bowed with relief as Ginny's attention veered away from him, her mouth falling open at the sight of her brother.

"It's - it's not really me," Ron began.

Hermione rushed toward him, both her hands extended to take his. "Yes, Ronald, it is. I've always said you were a fine, lovely boy. Now you look to everyone else like you've always looked to me."

"But I told you already, Hermione," he said, piling her hands on top of each other and handing them back to her. "Don't try to make me look like a ginger Malfoy."

"Why in the stars not?" Ginny asked.

Harry made a rather frightening choking sound. "Right, then," he said, pulling at his collar. "That's the wedding clothes sorted. We're off to catch the rest of the match, yeah Ginny?"

"Don't forget dinner with everyone in McGonagall's study tonight," Hermione called after them. "If you don't come, Mum will think I sabotaged it."

Draco and Hermione went back to the castle, making Ron and Pansy last to leave. He stood by his quidditch locker in the borrowed clothes, able to smell his sweaty equipment through the vents in the door, and asked her, "Well, what do you think, love? Look like a right git, yeah?"

She stepped forward and took his hand.

"That bad?" Ron asked. "You still can't think of anything decent to say?"

She looked up at him. "Do you remember?" she began. "Do you remember what I wore to the Triwizard Yule Ball?"

He jumped. "What? The night of my first kiss? Yeah, I do. You had this dress with a long skirt, all silvery coloured, and it had this fancy top with nothing at all to it in the back, just your warm, silky skin under my hand when they made us dance. Like I'd ever forget that."

She closed her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest, swaying as if they were dancing at a ball again, though she was dressed in Saturday clothes - denims and trainers. Ron pulled her close, kissing the glossy black hair on the top of her head.

He said, "You must remember what I was wearing that night. I'll never live it down. The whole school remembers."

She lifted her head, looking into his face. "No, I don't remember," she said, not because it was true, but because it wasn't. "All I remember is that you were beautiful - every bit as beautiful as you are right now. And that even though I was heartbroken over Draco, and vengeful, and desperate that night, you were as gentle and kind and respectful to me as I'd let you be."

He pulled her onto her toes and kissed her, keeping her close to him after the kiss ended, speaking into her face. "You're going to think it's just all the wedding talk, making me barmy. But the truth is, Pansy Parkinson, I love you. All those years pining for Hermione - that did nothing to prepare me for what I feel for you. Liking Hermione was like wearing these dress robes all the time. Loving you is like - like being in pajamas, in bed, warm and comfortable and so, so happy."

She buried her face in his shoulder. "Ron," she mewed, dragging out the vowel of his name.

He spoke into the side of her head. "What is it, love? Did you want to say something? Say something to me? Something special maybe?"

"Of course I love you too," she said, glancing at his face only after she'd said it. "You are joy itself and I adore you."

He bent to kiss her again, gently and slowly, building as she opened her mouth to him and he gathered her against himself so close that he began to lift her off the floor. She hopped into his arms, her legs clamping around his waist. He was surprised enough that his voice sounded in his throat. She laughed into his mouth. Once again, he wasn't sure where to put his hands and he couldn't hold the position for very long before he broke away.

He cleared his throat. "So you'll be meeting my mum and dad tomorrow," he said, "and it might go better if we're able to look them in the eye."

She smacked a kiss against his cheek as she let her feet drop back to the ground. "Right. I'll wait outside."

* * *

Snape slept through breakfast, rolling over to sit up on the edge of his bed just before noon. He hadn't meant to sleep so long but the fatigue of the past months was eclipsing his strength. Lately, the Dark Lord had become more of a nocturnal creature than ever, and to stay with him, to keep him occupied during his wakeful hours so he wouldn't grow bored with his current playthings and call Draco to him, had become a second shift for Snape. It had to end. And tomorrow, one way or another, it would.

Today, at Hogwarts, Snape's responsibility was to find Granger and read the final draft of the incantation she'd written for the ceremony, to give his opinion on whether it would work. But finding Granger would mean facing Draco, and he shrunk from the thought. Draco, who loved his father, and Snape, who...

He fingered the spot on his forehead where Pettigrew had drawn out the memory of Narcissa Malfoy's face as she looked up at him from within his arms. True enough, there may never have been a way for Snape to prevent them from taking it, yet the thought that her image, that expression on her face existed outside his mind sickened Snape. It had been given to him in tenderness but then harvested for malice. That's why the Dark Lord had taken it - to sow chaos, rage and grief, to tear apart a family for vengeance and sport.

There was nothing Snape could do to take the image back. And what did it show, really? He hadn't betrayed the Malfoys. He had respected Narcissa's vows of faithfulness to Lucius, and as for his own vows, they were solely to protect the family - to keep their hearts beating. The rest was something he had never been sworn to. But he felt that he ought to let Narcissa know that the memory had fallen into evil hands, so when it was brought forward to ruin her in the future, she could face it prepared.

He dropped his hand from his forehead. Tonight, before he reported to the Dark Lord in the manor's drawing room, he would go to Narcissa for the last time before the ceremony - perhaps for the last time ever - and let her know the memory was now the Dark Lord's. He would tell her this, and tell her goodbye.


	43. Chapter 43

Once the sun rose, Tim Granger drove from beneath the hawthorn tree where he'd sheltered for the night to a village he could see in the distance. He came along country lanes, through brown winter fields, following the high church spires. Ann had said the dark wizards had taken her to Wiltshire, so he hadn't fled west. Hogwarts was to the north, so he hadn't gone in that direction. Instead, he'd come east. He must be somewhere in Kent by now, and he reckoned he'd better stop or he'd run the chase off white cliffs and into the sea.

He checked his watch. It was 10:00, still a little over twenty-four hours until Hermione and the tall, pale boy cast the spell they promised would strike a blow at the darkest of the dark wizards. That's what they had all said - Hermione and the boy, their teachers, the ghost in the corridor, and Ann herself. If he couldn't believe in Ann, what else was there?

There was the need to eat, to visit a toilet, to procure a new toothbrush. So Tim drove slowly into the village, parked his car, and wandered as far away from it as he could. Eventually, he found himself inside the historic church that had led him there, making his five quid donation to the preservation society, and sitting in the empty choir. When anyone asked, he was a church music aficionado touring the countryside, hoping to hear their organist practice.

Yes, yes, go ahead and send for old Marjorie to play for him. No, no, she needn't hurry.

* * *

"He's scarpered," Bellatrix Lestrange said, hurling an heirloom vase from Ann Granger's curio cabinet out the kitchen window to smash it to bits on the empty parking pad in the garden.

"This is his twisted idea of virtue," Carrow clucked. "Trying to lure us away from the Muggle hordes so they won't be hurt, even though it makes him and his daughter more vulnerable. Shameful miscarriage of family loyalty."

"Yet we still don't have him," said Yaxley, trying to bar Bellatrix's way as she approached the window with a large china platter.

Carrow was pulling a metal contraption from his satchel, twisting the pieces of it together.

"Will you put that away," Yaxley snapped. "Secrecy sensors detect magical traces. What use is it when we're hunting a Muggle?"

Even as he said it, the scope lit up in Carrow's hands.

"Well, of course it's going to detect magic in the house where the mudblood daughter has been living all these years," Yaxley said. "Shut it down and let's be off. Disillusionment yourselves and we'll canvas the countryside by air."

Carrow grimaced. "Searching for a silver Muggle car by air? It's a needle in a haystack."

"Then go back to Malfoy Manor and tell the Dark Lord you give up," Yaxley said. "Off you go."

"Shut up, both of you," Bellatrix said. "What we need is a rat to track him down - a nose to follow the Muggle's stench from here to wherever he's hiding. And I know the very one."

Yaxley sneered. "You mean Pettigrew? Honestly, as if this party isn't mad enough already."

"The Dark Lord grows tired of him," Bellatrix went on. "Why, just the other night he was saying he'd like to replace Wormtail with a prettier, stupider servant, maybe even luscious Lucius himself."

"Spare us your demented family gossip," Yaxley said, though Carrow was leaning in to hear it. "Come along, Carrow. We'll be having a drink in Knockturn Alley, waiting for you to return with Wormtail, Bellatrix. Go quickly before the Dark Lord awakens for the day."

* * *

Snape sat behind his desk reading the incantation Hermione had written for the casting of her matrimonial charm, and looking over the sketches Draco had drawn of the inscription.

"The Friar says the Latin grammar is good," she said. "What I need from you, sir, is an opinion on the incantation's content."

"And what I need from you, Miss Granger," he said, "is to keep quiet until I've finished reading."

Draco's face twitched. "Did you not sleep well last night, sir?" It was more of a challenge than a question.

Snape lowered the parchment to look at Draco across his desk. "I did not."

"That's a shame, sir," he answered.

Snape raised the parchment. "Isn't it."

"Professor Snape, my mother - "

"Is completely recovered from her hexing, regrets she will not be at liberty to attend tomorrow, and recommends you give the present matters your full attention and not be distracted by ANYTHING else," he said.

Draco sat in grim silence as Snape examined their spells.

When he had finished, Snape sighed loudly, dropping the parchment on his desk. "I suppose we cannot hope for any better. Yes, Miss Granger, that means I believe it will do."

She nodded, gathering up her work, anxious to leave.

"Not, so fast," Snape said. "The inscription to be drawn on your arm is of sufficient complexity that I fear Draco may allow himself to be rushed in its execution, what with a crowd of wedding guests watching. Therefore, I recommend you complete most of the inscription before the ceremony. Here."

"Today?" Hermione stammered.

"It can be no later," Snape snarled. "Leave the word 'foi' unwritten until the ceremony - that and the scratch from the half-kneazle. Complete the rest at your leisure today. You won't be disturbed here in my study. I will leave you."

Snape and Hermione were standing, but Draco kept his seat. "Sir, what's happened? Something's changed. Something's wrong. No one will tell us what."

Snape leaned across his desk, as he usually did when he meant to be forceful, but today it seemed more like he was holding himself upright, battling his own weariness. "Young Master Malfoy, I have many matters to attend to besides yours, as does every other professor assisting with your matrimonial charm. Each of those matters is difficult and dangerous and not to be discussed with even the best of my students."

There was affection in the last line, so clear and unmasked that Hermione was taken aback by it, blinking and staring between Draco and the teacher she'd never understood him choosing as his favourite.

"Draco please," Snape continued, "take care of yourself and leave me to my own," he paused, unable to find the right word, "affairs."

"Let me help, sir," Draco said. "I want to help. We both do. So does Potter, and even Weasley. Let us - "

"You are helping," Snape said. "However, you must concentrate on the tasks you've been assigned. You still have much to prepare. Now, until tomorrow..."

Without any spinning or swooping, Snape retreated to his private quarters, through a passage at the back of the study. Draco watched him leave, his eyes still fixed on the door after Snape closed it and disappeared from view.

Hermione tugged at his sleeve.

He looked down at her, startled, shocked to find himself paying so little attention to her.

"Thinking of home?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, this is home," he said, clamping his arms around her in a tight embrace, kissing her forehead. "You are home. And are you ready to receive your matching inscription?"

She nodded, swallowing hard.

He bent to look into her eyes. "Are you alright? Are you - crying?"

She nodded again, not able to speak.

"You're not scared are you? The inscription doesn't hurt, just tingles, like any good magic," he said.

She cleared her throat. "I'm scared for your mother. And I'm scared for the danger all of this might pose for Harry. And the longer I go without seeing him, the more scared I feel for my father too. But I'm not scared of this, Draco. Mark me. Mark me forever or my heart will break."

He crushed her into the front of his jumper, her tears falling now. He held her until her shaking stopped and she loosened her grip on him. She was pulling away from him to take her seat at the table, pushing the sleeve of her left arm up past her elbow.

He drew his wand, holding away from its handle, near its end, like a stylus. He traced over the lines of his best sketch one more time, and then turned to Hermione's bare arm, smoothing her skin with his palm, turning her wrist back and forth, watching the light from the low dungeon window move across her flesh.

"It's such a small area," he said.

"Yes, I think I had an easier time drawing yours," she said. "Sorry."

"That is not what I meant," he tutted, bending to begin with a gentle kiss, smoothing the skin with his lips and cheek, as he'd done with the palm of his hand.

"Alright," he said, straightening up. "Let's begin."

He worked with slow care, stopping to light the lamps when it began to grow dark, taking care to illuminate every line and wand-stroke. The mark was smaller than the one she'd given him - a smaller hand and heart, the centre left blank for him to inscribe the word "faith" in French on it tomorrow, as the Order and her mother watched.

When he finished, the mark was barely visible on her arm, carved in thin white lines that faded more and more as they watched them. "The spell's not finished," she said. "So it won't glow like yours does. Not yet."

He kissed her arm again and the lines disappeared completely. "I broke it," he joked.

She drew her arm out of his grasp, lowering her sleeve. "You did not. But I do have some questions to ask McGonagall about it at dinner tonight. Like, when does the charm sever You-know-who from us? When will Harry be able to see if we can hurt him? Will it be as soon as you finish the inscription and say the incantation at the ceremony? Or will it not be finished until - you know - at consummation?"

Draco cringed. "Oh, that's awkward. Imagine Potter and Dumbledore up in the chapel, waiting for fireworks to attack the Dark Lord while we're off…" He shuddered. "They'd know exactly how long it takes…"

"Or maybe," she said, "all of the ceremony just sets the charm in place, and then we have to activate it later, when everything is ready. That's how it's always worked with your charm. Nothing happened until it was finished and we called it forth."

Draco let out a sigh, relieved. "Let's hope so."

* * *

Ann Granger, Professor McGonagall, and the rest of the wedding party were all assembled in McGonagall's study, seated around a dinner table when Draco and Hermione arrived. There was a seat for Professor Snape, but he hadn't yet filled it.

Once conversation began flowing, Hermione was able to lean close to McGonagall to ask her when the matrimonial charm would be activated. While she was careful to explain that she was not an expert on such things, McGonagall agreed that the charm being activated sometime after all the casting ceremonies were finished was most likely how things would unfold.

When they were finished whispering, Ann turned Hermione's attention to her. "You'll stay with me in my quarters tonight," she said. "Think of it as a hen night."

Hermione tried to smile. "So this means dad won't be back."

Ann's face blanched. "He'll come tomorrow. That Remus won't let anything keep him away. Trust in that, darling."

Hermione might have pressed for more, but Professor McGonagall had clapped her hands and risen from her seat at the head of the table. "Ladies and gentleman," she addressed them, "the ceremonies will end tomorrow with - a dance."

Harry grabbed his own stomach and groaned.

"No need for any of that, Mr. Potter. We are here to help. Everybody up." The chairs and table scraped across the floor, scooting themselves out of the way to clear a space for dancing as a small music box on McGonagall's desk was transformed into a large phono-blast, the very one she had used to train all of Gryffindor house to dance in the days leading up to the Yule Ball.

"I believe there's no need to assign partners," she said. "And there is no need to look terrified, Mr. Weasley. Your partner is quite accomplished."

Pansy dropped an elegant curtsy in thanks.

Ron jumped back, gawking at her. "What was that?"

"Quiet, Ron, and follow me."

"But," he sputtered, "in dancing I'm meant to lead. Even I know that much - "

"There's no time for your macho nonsense," Pansy said, settling her right hand against his flank. "The count will be 1-2-3, 1-2-3…"

"Yes, that's right. Oh, chin up, Potter," McGonagall said. "Take Miss Weasley by the waist and it will all come back to you. It's like flying a broom."

"If only," Harry moaned. "So it's a normal waltz? No switching arms? No lift?"

McGonagall was raising her wand to start the music. "No lifting unless, of course, the music moves you to do so."

Ginny had spent hours practicing with Neville before the Yule Ball, but that was over two years ago now. It meant that, as the music started, she and Harry stepped hard into each other. He was apologizing as she pulled him back up into a proper dancing posture. "Stop, Harry. It was all my fault. Now off we go."

Ron was managing to follow Pansy around, but he couldn't stop looking over his shoulder as he walked backward before her.

"Quick peeking and just trust me," she laughed at him.

"But how can you see where we're going with me stood in front of you?" he protested.

"That is none of your concern. Just move…"

In the centre of it all, drifting seamlessly together were Draco and Hermione. They no longer practiced dancing regularly, but they did keep it up enough for them to look as natural and relaxed as partners with such disparate heights could.

"A dance - well, this is a pleasant development in all the tedious wedding plans," Draco said, pulling her close and turning across the floor.

She grinned up at him. "Isn't it?"

He glanced at Ann Granger as she watched them with a look of surprised amusement. She hadn't seen Hermione dance in public since those awful tap and ballet recitals from when she was in primary school. It had turned out rather nice. And what business did a boy Draco's age have moving so elegantly?

"Do you want to know what else?" Draco was saying.

Nothing was funny but Hermione was laughing, delighted to see Draco unreservedly happy for the first time in days. "What?"

"I do believe the music, as Professor McGonagall says, moves me to try a lift. What do you say?"

She nodded. "I'm not sure my mother's heart can bear it, but let's give it a try."

They waited for the music to swell and Hermione sprung upward as Draco caught her under her arms and lifted her over his head.

The whole room called out, all of the women cheering while Ron and Harry groaned and protested.

"This, Malfoy," Ron said, pointing at him without letting go of Pansy's hand as she drove him backwards. "This, more than any of your snark, is why none of the other blokes like you."

Ginny commandeered the leading position again and spun round the floor with Harry. "You want me to lift you, Potter? I think I could manage it."

"Oh, I know you could," he said.

But Professor McGonagall had engaged her wand and stopped the music already. "Well, all of that seems to be well enough in order," she said. "Oh, Professor Dumbledore. There you are."

"Yes," he said, waltzing himself into the room. "I do apologize for my lateness."

"No need, Albus. No need." She bustled off to make sure he found something to eat, leaving the students to themselves again.

Hermione caught Harry, nodding toward the headmaster. "What has Dumbledore told you, in terms of a plan to attack You-know-who?"

He shifted from foot to foot. "As usual, not much. The ceremony is in the morning and he told me we'd meet after sundown to activate the charm but that's all I know."

"It's more than we've been told," Hermione said.

"So ridiculous," Draco was beginning to fume. "They tell us next to nothing, as if it's better that way."

"I didn't think Dumbledore would be here tonight," Harry said. "Frankly, I'm worried about him. Don't let the dancing fool you. He's less lively than he once was."

"Well, Harry," Hermione said, "he is one hundred and fifty years old, or something like that."

"Yeah, but it never seemed to matter until this year. And look at his hand. He keeps it tucked up in his sleeve most of the time but you can see he's wounded, and it's spreading, getting worse." They watched Dumbledore from across the room, looking carefree as he spooned dessert into his mouth.

"I wonder," Draco began. "I wonder if he's late because he's been upstairs, in the Room of Hidden Things, personally guarding the cabinet."

Harry frowned. "Why would he need to do that? It's not like it works."

Draco swallowed.

Harry's eyes widened behind his glasses. "It works?"

"They're fairly sure it does. That's what Tonks says," Draco told him. "Someone's used it. They wouldn't tell me who or why, but someone used it to leave the castle this week. I think it might be Snape. He's been staying out all night for days, and he's not likely to alarm anyone if he's found lurking around Borgin and Burkes in London - "

Draco's voice trailed off as Hermione's hand closed, claw-like over his arm. Hearing it all said together, in one continuous story, something new had struck her. She was shaking her head, her face twisted in pain. "No," she said. "No - Draco. I think I know who left through the cabinet. It would have been someone with no other way to get to London from here. I can't bear to think of it, but it explains so much. It wasn't Snape. Oh my stars, Draco - Harry. It must have been my dad."

* * *

The manor seemed empty when Snape arrived. House elves darted about, frantic and terrified, but there didn't seem to be any humans. Perhaps the Dark Lord had slaughtered them all. In the entrance hall, at the foot of the grand staircase, Snaped ordered one of the elves to stop, questioning him about the whereabouts of the witches and wizards. They were alive, but gone for now. Except for the mistress. She was upstairs.

Snape looked down the corridor toward the drawing room, then up the stairs, toward Narcissa Malfoy's chambers.

He told the elf, "Let him know I've come. I'll be along in a moment."

As he raised his hand to knock, Narcissa opened the door to her room, pulling him inside by the front of his waistcoat. "Severus, thank the stars. They've left me alone with him. He's enraged and about to start calling people. Oh, what if he calls Draco? We've got to do something."

"We will," he said, leaning on the door, holding it closed. "But first, I must tell you." He paused, swallowing, looking down into her face. "He has taken it. The Dark Lord - he has taken my memory of your face, as I held you in my arms last time. He took it as a weapon against your family."

He watched something like terror break over her face. And just as quickly, he watched it pass, flaming into something else. She was rushing toward him, pushing his back against the door, closing her arms around his torso beneath his robes, rising onto her toes, speaking close enough to his face for him to feel her breath on his lips. "Then we've nothing more to lose," she said.

He shut his eyes, shaking his head even as his hands gripped her sides as she held herself close to him, his fingers filling the spaces between her ribs. "Cissa, no."

"Ask yourself, Severus, why this house lets you in, why the floorboards don't collapse beneath your feet as you stand here embracing the master's wife?"

"Cissa, please - "

"The house protects and preserves the family - its future, which is its heir. Its foremost loyalty is to our Draco. And you are Draco's protector, not his father. His father has betrayed and abandoned him to the venom of the monster downstairs. Even the old bones of this house know it."

"Stop," Snape said, turning his face to keep his mouth from touching hers when he spoke. "You must stop talking of Draco. Your son is not what brings me here."

Her eyes widened, her breath catching. "What is it that brings you here? Severus?"

His profile was turned to her, his eyes still closed. His hands could have pushed her away, but they didn't.

She leaned closer, pressing her lips against his cheek.

His breath hissed out of him, as he turned his cheek away, out of her reach. He spoke. "Do not come to me because of this house."

She leaned forward again, kissing the taut flesh of his opposite cheek.

With his eyes still clenched shut, he said, "Do not come to me because of your son."

He turned his cheek away again, his face now held directly in front of her. She rose higher on her toes, to kiss the end of his nose. He opened his eyes, and said, "Do not come to me out of gratitude for saving your life."

He saw her nod as she leaned in again to kiss his chin. "Do not," he said, "come to me out of your loneliness."

She spoke in a whisper. "For what shall I come to you, Severus?"

His voice was raspy, low. "Come to me only out of love."

She kissed his mouth. It was sweet, almost chaste, but not at all chaste. Her pink lips embraced his decidedly but gently, soft and dewy, only slightly broken open.

In the years after his break with Lily Evan, before her death and his life of self denial, Snape had been with women - hard, ambitious women looking to ingratiate themselves to a high ranking Death Eater. They hadn't loved him. No one who had ever touched him like this had loved him. Against Narcissa, his heart felt as big as his entire chest, and still he pressed his back into the door, taking only what Narcissa freely offered. He kept still, holding back the storm inside him, the floods and thunder that had wanted this for every moment he could remember.

A crash sounded from the rooms beneath them. Narcissa was backing away, still looking into his face - the glistening eyes so blue they were grey. Maybe he had expected her to look different after they stepped over this line. She didn't. She looked the same - like Lucius Malfoy, like Lucius's own soul, like Lucius's wife.

"The Dark Lord," Snape said. "He can't be kept waiting any longer."

She withdrew her arms from inside his robes, nodding. "Yes, of course."

* * *

On their way to the Grackle and Chisel, the best pub in Knockturn Alley, Yaxley and Carrow thought it good to stop in at Borgin and Burkes. If it turned out they couldn't find the Muggle today, even with the help of Peter Pettigrew's rat nose, at least they could bring the Dark Lord news on how his vanishing cabinet was coming along.

Old Borgin cringed at the sight of them coming through his front door. He raised his hands, stepping out from behind his counter as if surrendering himself.

"It was a ghost!" he said. "It must have been a ghost. No one can apparate in or out of here and it's locked up tight after hours. A ghost! Not the cabinet at all."

Yaxley sneered. "What's he on about?"

"Haven't the faintest," Carrow replied.

Borgin lowered his hands. "Yes, it's nothing, sirs, nothing." He was fighting his face to smile for them. "We was just a bit spooked lately, by some spectral activity, here in the shop. Bound to happen every now and then, what with all the curses down here - "

"Cabinet," Yaxley interrupted. "What's this about our Lord's cabinet? Has it been tampered with?"

"No, no," Borgin rushed to say. "That's what I was saying. I checked it - double-checked it with my own secrecy sensors. First thing I did. And there was no sign of anything. No magic at all. Must have been ghosts. Certainly ghosts."

Carrow and Yaxley turned to face one another. "No trace of magic," Carrow said.

"Ghosts," Borgins insisted.

"Or," Yaxley grinned, "Muggles."


	44. Chapter 44

**AN: Thanks for all the comments and favourites still coming in. Can't seem to keep writing without them. Love, love, love. DDD**

Peter Pettigrew stood in Borgin and Burkes shop sniffing at a black sock Bellatrix Lestrange had pulled out of the laundry hamper at the Grangers' house. No one else could have appreciated its rich, complex aroma like Pettigrew did. It was a blend of middle-aged male Muggle feet, soap, leather shoes that had got wet with rainwater and dried several times over, rounded off with the faint trace of the disinfectant used to clean the floors at Granger Dental Surgery. Pettrigrew crushed the sock to his face and tried not to relish the scent too openly.

Yaxley shuddered at the sight of him all the same. "Anything?"

Pettigrew raised a finger, calling for quiet, as if his sense of smell was keener in silence. He held the sock to his face again.

Bellatrix snarled. "Quit snogging it and tell us if the Muggle has been here."

"Yes," he said. "He was here. He was at the door, on this rug, at this rack, and his trail stops here at - " he paused - " the Master's cabinet."

The four Death Eaters and Old Borgin exchanged looks of shock.

Bellatrix broke into laughter. "The cabinet? The Muggle came from Hogwarts through the cabinet? Little Draco did it. He's fixed it. Our Lord must know at once. Let the Muggle run and hide for now. We'll be pulling Hogwarts to the ground by morning."

"Stop!" Yaxley called to her as she was reaching for her wand to disapparate. "Stop and think Bellatrix. If the cabinet is fixed, why wouldn't your nephew have said so immediately? Something's not quite right, or why would he wait? Isn't his mother being held hostage over it?"

Bellatrix narrowed her eyes. "Yes, actually."

Carrow took up the questioning. "And why," he began, "would young Malfoy test the cabinet on the Muggle father of his lover? Wouldn't he rather send someone else? Someone more expendable, but also more capable, and with less of a sentimental attachment to him? Bully a younger student to do it? Or trick a nuisance rival? Or someone easily led and too honored by his friendship? Or at the very least, an elf who couldn't refuse?"

Yaxley stood tapping his wand against his own chin, calculating. "The Muggle's departure from Hogwarts by the cabinet begs more questions than it answers. Dumbledore and the rest would surely have wanted to keep him there. And I agree with Amycus that this Granger man makes a poor choice for a subject to test it on, helpless as he is in our world - "

"Though he did get out of here somehow," Pettigrew mumbled.

"Shut up!" Bellatrix snapped.

"I'd wager he slipped out of the school unauthorized," Yaxley concluded.

"Wouldn't they be searching for him then?" Carrow asked.

"If you really did see that mangy phoenix ruining my spell in Piccadilly Circus, then clearly they are following him," Bellatrix said.

Yaxley stepped closer to the cabinet. "This so-called repair - is it thorough? Is it legitimate? Borgin, speak up."

The old man coughed. "The young Master and myself haven't worked on it since Christmas, and at that time, its performance was spotty - unreliable. I've done a little tinkering myself since then but - I can't be sure. As far as I know, it may work in one direction only, from Hogwarts out. Or, it might be able to transport Muggles well enough, but who's to say if a witch or wizard would come through with their magic intact. No promises, no guarantees."

"You try it for us," Yaxley said, turning on him. "Show us your handiwork."

Borgin scoffed. "You'll not get me into that. If it, I might find myself in Hogwarts with Auror wands drawn on me, and if it don't work, I'm lost in the ether." He was raising his hands, waving off their threatening tugging at their sleeves. "Stop that now. You can flaunt your Dark Marks all day and I won't get into that box for you. And if you try to force me, every mace and axe and sword on that rack will fly up to protect me."

Bellatrix shoved Carrow across the floor. "You test it then. We can't bring news of the cabinet back to the Dark Lord unless we're sure of it. Do it, Carrow, you useless - "

He spun around, his wand aimed at Bellatrix.

Her snarl curved into a smile. "Oh? Shall we?" she purred, only too eager to duel.

"Stop," Yaxley called again. "Obviously, none of us is willing to risk a trial of the cabinet with our own bodies."

Bellatrix was storming toward the exit. "Just a matter of snatching someone off the street then."

"Absolutely not," Yaxley said. "Look, it's late Saturday and I need to be back in the office playing nice with the Minister on our Lord's behalf by Monday morning. We are neither authorized nor prepared to carry out a kidnapping tonight. I say we stick to the original mission as planned. We recover the Muggle and bring him back to the manor. Then we inform our Lord about the cabinet."

Bellatrix lunged close enough to hiss into Yaxley's face. "I say you're a coward who's been a bureaucrat at that bloody ministry so long you make a piss poor soldier. Gutless."

"The marks of a good solider are precisely obedience and discipline," he countered. "Which is why you are regarded not as a trusted deputy but as a reckless whore."

Bellatrix screeched, brandishing her wand.

Seeing too late that he'd gone too far, Yaxley was retreating, ducking behind Borgin's counter.

"Easy, easy!" Borgin was calling, spreading his arms to shield his most fragile inventory.

Carrow was shouting over all of them in his shrill wail, addressing Pettigrew. "Can you track the Muggle from his house to wherever he's gone now? Yes or no?"

Pettigrew nodded, sniffing the sock again. "Yes, of course. Gladly."

"Then let's be off," Carrow said, nudging the tip of Bellatrix's wand toward the floor, taking Yaxley by the arm to raise him from behind the counter. "When we've found this Granger man, we can interrogate him on what he knows about the cabinet, and then bring the Dark Lord the news with all of these dangerous questions answered. The Dark Lord loses nothing by it. Hogwarts and this cabinet aren't going anywhere."

Bellatrix blew her hair out of her face, stomping forward without consulting with the others to set a protective ward around the cabinet. "You," she said to Borgin, "leave the shop closed until we return."

"Yes, of course. As you wish, Madam Lestrange." He was only too happy to lock and bolt the door as they left.

* * *

Professor Snape was the last guest to arrive at Professor McGonagall's dinner the night before Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger's wedding. He rushed through the door, his robe flying, the colour of his complexion higher and pinker than usual, his dark eyes darting over the room, taking in everything but Draco's face.

"Sir," Draco said, approaching him anyway. "Sir, we have some questions about the Room of Hidden Things. They're most urgent, and confidential. May we - "

"Not now, Draco," Snape said, still not looking at Draco's face, trying to get the headmaster's attention instead.

"Severus," Professor Dumbledore said, turning away from his dessert. "You're late. You must be famished."

Snape frowned, debating whether to speak in front of the entire group or waste time wheedling a private audience with the headmaster. "Yes sir," he began, speaking openly, acting on his preference to not treat the students like infants. "I've been to Malfoy Manor this evening and found the Dark Lord's deputies dispatched. I knew he planned to send them, but not with such numbers and speed. It seems they are about to," he paused, glancing at Hermione, "strike. And therefore, I suggest we move the ceremony to as early tomorrow morning as the stars will allow. Five o'clock will be sufficient, I believe."

All eyes turned to Hermione, the bride, waiting for her reaction to this last minute, unapproved change in her wedding plans. She ignored it completely. "Dispatched?" she repeated. "Death Eaters dispatched? What exactly do you mean by that, sir?"

"Gone," Snape said. "When I arrived, the house was empty but for Madam Malfoy - "

"How did you find her?" Draco interrupted.

Snape seemed to quake from head to foot. But what he said was, "She is well enough. Though with Pettigrew out of the house, the Dark Lord was particularly restless. He calmed after they sent Carrow back in Pettigrew's place, but his temper was rising again when I slipped away. I must return at once."

"Wormtail?" Harry spoke the name like a curse. "What can they use him for besides bowing and scraping to his master? He's not good for anything."

Snape took a deep breath. "Tracking, Potter. As a rat animagus, he is able to track Dr. Granger over long distances, to wherever he is hiding."

Hermione swayed on her feet, clutching Draco's arm, nodding. "As we thought. Dad is not with Remus. He never has been."

Ann rushed forward, taking Hermione's hands. "No, darling, your father left on his own. He decided to go off as a decoy, keeping the baddies too busy to even dream you could be mounting something against them."

Hermione sputtered for a moment, almost unable to say, "Decoy? Mum do you have any idea how powerful, how wicked -?"

"I do, darling," Ann interrupted. "But nothing I said convinced your father to stay here. I argued and argued but - you're his little girl. He felt he had to do this for you. And it's alright, so far. He's been keeping in touch with me by answer phone. He's alright."

The rest of the students stood shocked at what Dr. Granger had done. Ron and Pansy had the standard stereotyped impression of Muggles, that they were delicate and skittish, childlike. As for Harry, everything he knew about Muggles, everything he'd learned from his Dursley relatives, had led him to expect the worst. But now here was Hermione's father making a sacrifice like this, expecting nothing from the wizards in return.

Hermione tugged her hands free of her mother's grip. "I'm going to get him."

"Then you undermine what he's done," Ann said.

"But we can't just let him - "

"I find that I agree with Miss Granger," Dumbledore said, even as he cut her off. "Professor McGonagall, contact Remus and tell him to retrieve Dr. Granger, if you please. Fawkes will show him the way."

"Tell Remus that Pettigrew is not alone," Snape added. "He has Corban Yaxley and Bellatrix Lestrange as accomplices."

"And what about the cabinet?" Harry burst in as Professor McGonagall flared out of sight in her Floo. "The one upstairs, the one you've known has been working for days?"

Ron gasped, the girls whispering questions to him.

Dumbledore turned to Harry. "It is secured and guarded with my own seal," he said. "Ah, you are about to question whether that will hold a band of determined Death Eaters sent to attack under pain of death, and you are right to ask. It will buy us a little time, alert us of an attack, but it will not prevent one altogether."

"Then why not go upstairs and destroy it now?" Harry said, barely keeping from shouting. "Blast it to splinters and put an end to it."

Draco was shouting. "Because, Potter, as I've told you and told you, as soon as it's destroyed, they kill my mother."

"They will not," Snape called, louder than anyone, "kill your mother."

At last, Snape and Draco locked eyes across the crowded study. "I will leave you all," Snape said, "and return to the manor for Narcissa. And I will not set foot in this school again until and unless I bring her back with me."

* * *

"You need to rest," Ann said, combing Hermione's hair with her fingers as they lay side by side in bed. "We need to be up and ready to be radiant by 4 am."

Hermione rolled onto her side to face her mother. "I can't sleep. I'm thinking about Dad. I'm thinking about Draco, and his mum. I'm thinking about everything."

Ann tucked a coil of Hermione's hair behind her ear, smiling in the dim, fire-lit room with uncommon tenderness. "Well, close your eyes, at any rate. If you pretend to rest, you may fool yourself. Dad will be alright, darling. Those wizards are off to fetch him now."

Hermione blinked, trying to remember. "It was just Remus they sent, wasn't it?"

Ann blinked back. "No, they mentioned another one too. Fox, was it?"

"Fawkes? No, Mum. Fawkes is not a wizard, exactly. More like a magical bird."

Ann wrinkled her nose. "Best you not tell me any more about it."

They shared a quiet laugh in the dark room.

"That Lucius Malfoy had better get himself out of jail soon," Ann said. "I think your chemistry professor is sweet on our Cissa."

"No." Hermione gasped, raising herself on one elbow. "How can you say that?"

"How can you not have noticed?" Ann impersonated Snape's voice. "'Until and unless I bring her back with me.' Did you hear how he said it? My word, who'd have thought such a grim man could come up with something so handsome to say? And just between us, Hermione, if your father-in-law is one of those Death Eaters, Cissa may be better off with the teacher."

Hermione lowered her head back onto her pillow. "It's strange, Mum. I feel like you already know the Malfoys better than I do."

"Why is that, darling? Does Draco not take you to visit them?"

She shook her head. "You remember that day at the beginning of my second year, in the bookstore on Diagon Alley, with Draco's father and Mr. Weasley shouting and shoving and books falling down on everyone. It's always like that and worse. At first, we were afraid the Malfoys might send Draco off to school in Bulgaria if they knew about us."

Ann frowned. "That doesn't sound like Cissa."

"No, it wasn't. It was Mr. Malfoy's threat. But it meant we never went near his parents." She stopped short of telling her mother about Lucius Malfoy leading the attack on Harry and the rest of them in the Department of Mysteries.

"Well, you never brought Draco to meet us either, not until this Christmas when he picked up your suitcase at Kings Cross. Does that mean we're too much trouble as well?" Ann said.

Hermione snuggled against her. "No, Mum. You're just too perfect and precious for the lunacy of the wizard world. I wish you were back in London, asleep in our house, dreaming of dental caries right now."

Ann kissed her daughter's forehead. "Well, I don't. I do wish your father was here, safe and sound, but I'm relieved that you're not bearing all of this alone."

Hermione smiled against her mother's shoulder. "I'm not alone. And I never will be again."

"Yes, we should talk about that," Ann said. "You are taking that prescription for birth control pills, aren't you?"

"Yes, Mum. And the medi-witch here at school taught me a contraceptive spell to use as well."

Ann shuddered beneath the blankets. "You'd better use both."

"I will, Mum, just like I promised. Not that Draco and I have done anything yet…"

Ann huffed. "Still seems odd to me, for a couple about to be married. But I suppose you are only seventeen."

Hermione grinned. "Draco is still sixteen for the next few months, actually."

Ann groaned. "Good heavens, don't tell me that either. Is he - experienced, at all?"

Hermione poked Ann in the arm. "How could he be, Mum? He's been with me since he was fourteen. He did kiss other girls before that, though, including one of the bridesmaids for tomorrow."

"The brunette," Ann nodded. "I can tell. There's something smug about her, even though she's with your father's dreamy redhead."

Hermione was groaning now. "Why is Dad so taken with Ronald?"

"Because of your boy friends, he is the most like your dad himself," Ann said. "And that is also why nothing much has ever happened between the two of you."

Hermione sighed. "I did like Ron an awful lot when I was very young."

"Typical first love," Ann said. "Doomed."

Hermione laughed, perching her chin on her mother's shoulder. "How old were you, Mum?"

"When I had my doomed first love? Twelve, I suppose."

"No, Mum. I mean, how old were you, the first time you - you know?"

"Oh," Ann said, pausing so long Hermione expected her to refuse to answer. "I was seventeen as well," she said at last.

"It wasn't Dad?"

"No, it wasn't," Ann sighed. "Even though the relationship didn't last, he was kind to me and we kept dating for the rest of the summer, even afterward. It was the 1970s. It was the best we could do." She sounded sad, but said, "There's no point in regretting. But the first time - it's not like the other times, Hermione. It needs to be with someone you trust. Someone you love deeply, and don't fear in any way."

Hermione hummed, quietly considering. After a moment, she was able to ask, "It's going to hurt, isn't it?"

Ann sighed again. "Yes, it probably will. What matters most will be how you feel in your heart and soul, not - down there."

"Mum, yuck."

"It has to be said, darling. There is too much misinformation. Your first time will not be like it is for the heroines in romance novels. Don't misunderstand," Ann said. "I'm not denouncing romance novels. It's just that they tend to be terrible places to learn about first times."

Hermione propped herself on one elbow. "So tell me what I need to know, Mum. Tell me plainly, as one scientist to another."

Ann snorted. "What, an itemized list, in bullet points?"

Hermione sat fully upright in bed. "If you can. Please. I won't say 'yuck' again. Go ahead and be straightforward. It suits us."

Ann sat up as well. "Alright. First: don't waste a moment worrying about whether he's enjoying it. He is. Even if you think you might be doing a bad job of it, he's still enjoying it better than anything else he does…"

The next bits were technical - advice on speed, movement and position, what to do with her hands, how to not make a mess, and avoiding the need for an antibiotic.

Hermione nodded and nodded. "Right, right."

"And seventh," Ann said, with a welcome air of finality, "be kind to yourself. If seventeen-year-old me knew about the kind of sex forty-three-year-old me has, she'd be astounded - completely gobsmacked, howling with envy. But it did take a little time to sort it out. So be patient, my brilliant little perfectionist. Practice faithfully and you will get it."

Hermione lay back down, falling heavily against her pillow.

"Are you alright, darling? I haven't spooked you, have I?"

"No, Mum. Thank you, truly." Hermione patted her mother's hand. "Just tell me one more thing: do you like him?"

"Draco?" Ann said. "In due course, I will love him. How's that?"

Hermione dropped her arm over her mother's stomach, yawning at last. "There are dangerous days ahead, Mum. We may not have much time before all of wizarding society starts to come apart. So do be sure to come to love him soon."

* * *

Tim Granger had spent all day hiding, pretending to be touring churches in the countryside. Night had fallen, and he was now retracing his tracks, heading back to the hawthorn tree that had sheltered him the night before. In the morning, Hermione's spell would be cast, and Ann would send the school's wizards to find him and bring him back to safety. That had been the plan. It was almost over. All he had to do was survive the night.

He couldn't be sure he'd found the same tree, but Tim was too exhausted to drive any more. He turned in underneath the spreading boughs, tipping his seat back, and checked his watch. It was 1:30am.

The worst thing about these nights spent sleeping in the car in dark lanes was the fear - the vigilance that kept him never quite at rest. The second worst thing was the cold. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep when he woke up shivering, teeth chattering, to turn on the car heater, idling under the tree. When the car was warm, he shut it off.

And then he heard them.

From outside the car came a noise like the claws of a large rodent, or a badger or even a sloth, scraping along the metal bumpers and fenders.

"Is it him?" a manic, jarringly familiar voice that squeaked when it tried to whisper was asking outside his window.

"How should I know?" a man answered, swearing. "He's fogged up the glass with his filthy breath, hasn't he? Can't see a thing."

Tim's heart raced as he feigned sleep. He must not panic. In a moment, he'd bolt upright, turn the key in the ignition, and drive away. They could chase him if they wanted, but he had an escape route and he would use it as soon as he was sure he wouldn't run over the one lying on the ground.

"Wormtail, what are you doing on your belly?" the woman demanded.

There was a hiss of air. "These are the tyres," a high, whining voice explained. "If they're punctured, the car can't move. Sticks him here in place, trapped."

Tim's heart sunk. It was like being stalked by bears, or big cats. He could no longer count on running, only playing dead. The car's doors were locked. But Hermione must have told him about that ruddy door opening spell a hundred times.

He heard it spoken now.

"Alohomora," the witch said.

All four of his car doors flew open at once. Still, he didn't move until a gloved hand gripped his coat and began to pull. He grabbed at the seats of the car, his fingers scrabbling against the fabric, catching nothing but a short, straight twig from the tree, one he'd picked up and passed some time whittling the thorns from earlier in the day. It was clutched in his hand as Corban Yaxley dragged him onto his feet beside the car.

"This is him, isn't it Pettigrew? Take a whiff," the large wizard said.

Tim didn't recognize the wizard Yaxley spoke to, a shaggy, toothy man who appeared to be blowing his nose in a small dark handkerchief. "Let me have him," the man said.

The large wizard stood back, as if both the ratty man and Tim disgusted him and he was eager to get away. The ratty man felt no such aversion. He leaned into Tim's armpit, inhaling hungrily, then switched to sniff at the handkerchief which Tim now recognized as a sock.

"It's him," the ratty man said. "It's the one we've been tracking."

The witch squealed and broke into a spinning jig, sending green fire into the sky from the end of her wand.

The ratty man was leaning into Tim for another sniff, so predatory, so repulsive, Tim acted on his long disused British Army combat training. With his foot, he swept both of the man's legs out from beneath him, knocking him over, and falling on top of him. The ratty man had drawn his wand in defense and Tim was battling him for it beneath their coats, where the other wizards couldn't see.

"What are you doing, Wormtail?" the larger man asked, annoyed.

Tim kicked Wormtail in the stomach as he got to his feet, the wand they'd been fighting over held in his fist, leveled at Corban Yaxley.

Disarmed and breathless, Pettigrew was scuttling backward, retreating behind Yaxleys legs, still seated in the frozen dirt. Bellatrix had stopped celebrating and was ambling over, cackling as if at a terrible joke.

Yaxley groaned in frustration. "What are you going to do with that?" he asked. "Bloody Muggle - give it here."

He took a step toward Tim who waved the wand as menacingly as he could toward Yaxley's face. "Stop right there," Tim said. "Drop your weapons. Both of you."

Bellatrix howled with laughter.

"We will do no such thing," Yaxley answered. "Get up, Wormtail," he said, kicking at the man at his feet. "Your incompetence has given the Muggle delusions of grandeur."

"Do not move!" Tim yelled in his best sargeant's voice.

Wormtail was standing anyway. The wizards were coming together, snickering at the Muggle with the wand.

"Careful, little one," Bellatrix was crooning, mocking.

"Do you have any idea who I am?" Tim went on. "Don't you know why your boss is so desperate to catch me?"

"You're nobody," Yaxley said. "Muggle scum. Fodder for torture."

Tim stood as straight as he could, his fine dentist's hands in perfect control, not shaking at all regardless of his fear. "I am the father of Hermione Granger. Do not act like the name means nothing to you. Do not act like you don't recognize the brightest witch of her age. That's what they call her - "

"Oh, shut up and give us the wand. It's useless in your hands. This is embarrassing - "

"What are the chances," Tim shouted over Yaxley, "that the man who sired the brightest witch of her age is incapable of getting a wand to fire?"

Yaxley took a step closer. "If you had any magical abilities you would have been notified and trained as a child, now give it here - "

"You won't take it," Tim said, slashing the wand through the air in front of himself. "You won't take another step to take it from me because you know I can use it, but you also know I've never been taught. Once it begins, I can't show you any mercy. I don't know how."

Bellatrix forced another laugh, but its hard edge was dulled with something - if not fear, then at least doubt.

"I am going to get back in my car and drive away," Tim said, sidling toward the open door, "and you will not follow me."

"But your tyre," Wormtail said.

"They drive flat," Tim hollered. "Or didn't you know?"

He continued to slide along the side of the car, the wand still pointed at the wizards. He was nearly close enough to slip inside when Yaxley lunged forward, snatching at the wand. Tim let it slip easily out of his grip. Yaxley tossed it to Pettigrew. Reunited with his wand, he turned it lovingly in his hands.

Then he snarled. "It's a stick," Pettigrew swore. "It's a bloody useless stick."

Tim was already in the driver's seat, turning the key, the engine coming to life. The wizards advanced en masse toward him. And in his right hand, out the open door, he sliced through the air with Peter Pettigrew's real wand, short, brittle, and dangerous.

"Get back!" Tim Granger screamed, orange sparks flaring from the end of the wand, bouncing onto the ground as the wizards recoiled, shocked.

"Back!" Tim cried again, flailing upward now, toward the wizards' heads, their arms raised, disbelieving, as sparks singing their clothes. "Back!" he cried one last time, as he stomped on the accelerator and the car limped away.

Tim knew he may not have been making a proper escape, but every moment he fought and fled, he was finding his daughter a little more time.


	45. Chapter 45

**AN: Love hearing your predictions! Keep them coming! If you need a one-line recap, Hermione's father is acting as a decoy, distracting the Death Eaters from her wedding to Draco which is happening TODAY (pretty much)**

Tim Granger drove, lurching on one flat tyre, lumbering down a deserted country lane. The car rattled and shook, unable to gather much speed, difficult to steer, but Tim drove on, hoping that every second the dark wizards wasted chasing him was another moment Hermione had to do her work, to protect her mother, to fight off the most evil wizard of them all.

Shapes and colours darted alongside him as he urged the car onward, the wizards keeping up somehow, as if they were flying. Their faces streaked through his vision, firing lights and hurling objects against the glass and metal. The chase went on and on until one of them mustered a blast forceful enough to shatter the back window in a hail of green glass pebbles before lighting the rear upholstery on fire.

Tim slashed the wand he'd stolen from the one they called Wormtail toward the gap in the back window, but the fit of focused rage and fear and love that had made him able to fling sparks out of the wand earlier that night had passed. He was exhausted, beaten, and needed to escape his ruined, flaming car.

He stomped on the brake, the wheels locking, sending him spinning in a full circle, the wizards swooping out of the way until the car came to a halt. It had barely stopped moving when he shouldered through the driver's door, pitching Wormtail's wand as far as he could into the dark fields - gone.

As the wand passed out of view, the witch snagged him by the throat, crushing his trachea in the crook of her elbow, the tip of her wand mashed against his head as if to impale him through his temple.

"Got you," she hissed wetly into his ear.

She straightened up, holding her wand aloft, beginning to turn on the spot in the maneuvre Tim recognized as the one Minerva McGonagall had used days before for side-along apparition. He braced himself for the sickening squeezing and spinning, but the large wizard was shouting at the witch, catching her by her cloak.

"Our Lord forbids Muggles to be apparated. You know that. We deliver him by broom," he said, taking Tim by the arm and tugging him toward himself.

"Muggle!" the witch screeched, yanking Tim back in her direction. "Muggle, is he? You saw what he did back there. He's a filthy mudblood, to be sure, but a Muggle? "

"That was nothing but a fluke, like one of their magician's tricks, simple fireworks meant to shock and disorient, not magic."

The witch pressed her mouth to Tim's ear again, screaming into it. "Are you a magician, lovey? Are you? Rabbits in your hat? Cards up your sleeve? That you? Then how'd you get to London? In the cabinet? How did you work it?"

Tim couldn't answer while her arm clamped his jaws together.

"Speak up!"

"I don't know," he said through his teeth. "It just did. You're the ruddy wizards, why don't you tell me?"

"How dare you!"

Wormtail was catching up to the wrecked car, stumbling against Bellatrix, tipping her off balance and interrupting her next attack on Tim.

She shoved Wormtail off and sent him slumping over the bonnet of the car as he laboured for breath. "My wand," he gasped. "My wand is lost? No, it can't be lost."

The large wizard scoffed. "Your wand? It's no loss at all, you incompetent disgrace to the race of wizard - "

Ratty eyes bulged in the firelight. "Listen here Yaxley, you great stodgy git, I've been a self-taught animagus since I was a lad at school. I'd like to see either of you try to - "

"Shut up. Wormtail!" Yaxley spat. "We return to the manor by broom, as ordered by our Lord."

The witch was furious, jumping and kicking in protest even as she held onto Tim's throat.

"Discipline!" Yaxley hollered at her. "Show the Dark Lord your discipline, Bellatrix. Only witches and wizards are worthy to travel by apparation. But so we don't have to wrestle this violent beast balanced on a broomstick all the way back to Wiltshire - Stupefy!"

Tim was hit, falling at the witch's feet on the frozen ground, abrading his forehead on the gravel, bleeding into his open eye, unable to move.

"You idiot!" she raged. "How do we question him about the cabinet if he's out cold?"

Yaxley was ignoring her, conjuring a broom, hefting Tim's body and draping him by his waist over the handle. The witch and Wormtail were mounting brooms themselves, all of them kicking off into the sky, the growing light of dawn rising behind them in the east as they flew toward the Dark Lord in the west.

* * *

Ann Granger had set the alarm clock in her room for 4am, but Hermione was awake before then, standing in the corridor outside, facing the now empty seventh floor wall where the door to the Room of Hidden Things had been visible to her for most of the year. She pressed her palm to the stones, holding it there until a thin, white hand covered hers and pulled it back toward her body.

"Draco," she said, leaning against his front. He laced his fingers together across her stomach, and bent over her shoulder to press his cheek against hers. "It feels selfish, doesn't it?" she said. "Staying here, getting married, while our parents are out there, fighting for all of our lives."

He hummed. "Kids are entitled to their parents' protection. That's the ideal, until we get to a generation like ours, on the verge of war. Doesn't mean our parents won't try."

"I abhor their trying," she said. "My parents' idea of trying and your parents' too. They're awful at it and they need to stop. If I could just slip away and find Dad - "

"Lupin will find him," Draco said. "Everyone has a role in this, and bringing back your dad can't be yours. We have to trust the others."

"What about your mother? Did you feel much comfort from what Snape said about not coming back here without her?"

Draco blew his breath into her hair. "I felt something when he said it, alright. I wouldn't call it comfort. But I have no choice but to trust him to help her, don't I?" He straightened his arms, turning her to face him. "We have to believe that the matrimonial charm is our best hope - the best thing we can offer everyone else, better than crashing into rescues other people are willing and able to do in our place. This - this charm is something that can be finished by no one but us."

She was nodding but not looking at him.

"Hermione," he said, waiting for her eyes to meet his. "Whatever happens today, whatever we do, you and I need to stay together and finish this."

Down the corridor, the door to Ann's room was opening. "Hermione, darling, get away from Draco before the wedding. You're not supposed to see him, or doesn't he know?"

Hermione shrugged at Draco's bewildered expression. "Sorry. Old Muggle superstition. I have to go."

She was pulling away, even as he protested, his hands reaching after her.

"Go to the chapel, Draco," she said. "By now, Harry and Ron will be waiting." Her mother swept her back inside as he stood alone and watched her leave, lost.

Draco had gone by the time Ginny and Pansy joined the Granger women to dress together in Ann's quarters. The pale, dawn-coloured blue he'd chosen for their dresses suited both of them well, despite their very different complexions, and each of them was as satisfied with their looks as bridesmaids can ever be.

The dress Hermione had kept stashed in her dormitory since the Yule Ball, the one Draco had borrowed from his mother for her to wear when they danced together, was finally making its grand appearance before a crowd as their wedding dress. In order to accommodate the inscription on Hermione's arm, the sleeves had been altered, their seams slit open from wrist to elbow so her forearms could be bared.

"You had this exquisite gown hidden in your room for two years and never wore it anywhere?" Pansy marveled, circling Hermione, smoothing the skirts with a kind of reverence. "It's a Friedrich Martineau original, you know that, don't you? Madam Malfoy has been a patron of his since he began designing. She has an impeccable eye for gowns."

Ann shook her head, smiling. "Dear Cissa," she said. "She does love to lounge around in something comfy."

Hermione smiled, remembering what her roommates had done when they spotted the gown in her post. "Yes, Lavender and Parvati dug up a Witch Weekly article about it. When I found out the dress was famous, that's when I knew I couldn't wear it to a school dance."

Pansy clucked her tongue. "Still, Draco must have been devastated."

Hermione turned to look at - yes, at her friend Pansy Parkinson. "You know him well," she said. "But I did wear it for him in private, at our final dance lesson."

Ginny snorted. "Did you get much dancing done?"

Hermione laughed again. "No, actually."

Ann was the only one of them who had any idea what to do with Hermione's hair, and as she tucked and coiled and rolled it, Hermione lifted her left arm, straining to see any sign of the inscription partially set in her skin. It would stay hidden until Draco's breath called it forth.

The bridal party dressed upstairs while, in the back of the Hogwarts chapel, behind a screen, Draco, Ron, and Harry were putting on black wizards' dress robes that Ann would find much too much like vampire costumes. Draco was using his wand to press sharp creases into Ron's lapels when Fred and George Weasley came rollicking in to join them.

"Oi, Draco," George said, "look here. Watch carefully now." He swooped and flicked his wand, repeating a low, breathy spell that ended in a small flash of pink sparks as Fred looked on proudly.

"What was that?" Ron demanded, alarmed.

"Ah yes, little Ronnie. Time you learned. We've heard what you've been up to, skulking around in the dungeons. You'd better pay close attention too. Let's see it again, George," Fred said. The twins repeated the spell again, in unison this time.

Bill Weasley threw the screen's curtains open. "What did I just hear? What in bloody hell is going on back here?"

Arthur Weasley's head poked through the screen as well. "Bit early to be casting contraception charms, don't you think boys?"

"Never too early," Fred said, throwing his arm around Bill.

"But often too late, isn't that right Dad?" George said, elbowing his father in the ribs.

"I cannot imagine how either of you would know," Bill said, flinging the screen closed and heading back to his fiancee seated in the chapel pews.

As always, Arthur ignored the twins' teasing, well past immune to it by now. "Did you catch that, Draco?" he said. "Rather important to know, actually, a good contraception spell."

Draco's face was pink as he nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Right," Arthur said, retreating.

"You got a good look at it too, didn't you Ronnie?" Fred drawled.

"You and your Slytherin minx - " George was saying.

Ron swore, throwing both of the tattered trainers he'd worn to the chapel that morning at them.

Harry took each of the twins by the arm. "Thanks for the tips," he was saying, leading them out. "We'll be ready soon."

Ron was gathering up his shoes. "Sorry, Draco mate. This is their idea of looking out for you and Hermione. She's like a kid sister to them. And you - since they know your own dad can't be - well - "

Draco was nodding, managing something like a smile. "Right. I know."

Outside the screen, Professor McGonagall cleared her throat. Harry stepped out to speak with her and when he came back, he was holding an uncharacteristically docile Crookshanks. At the sight of the kneazle-cat, Draco's nervousness softened a little. Harry held him as Draco petted his head, Crookshanks tipping his neck to be scratched under his chin.

"Look at him loving you up," Ron said. "I've never seen him like that before. Nothing like a bloodthirsty predator at all."

Draco wasn't sure whether Ron was speaking to the cat, or him.

McGonagall cued the music and the boys jumped.

"Deep breath," Harry said to Draco. "Like when they let the snitch out."

The boys walked the aisle through the middle of the chapel and stood by the altar where Professor Dumbledore and the Fat Friar were waiting.

The music changed slightly and Pansy and Ginny appeared at the back of the chapel, coming forward to stand at the altar opposite the boys. Ann and Hermione came last.

It was still early enough, dark enough in the chapel, for it to be lit with candles. The hundreds of tiny flames reflected in the crystals magically woven into the fabric of Hermione's dress. Her hair was soft and loose, pulled up over one ear in a glittering clip Pansy had given her, the rest of it spilling over her shoulders, down her back.

Fairy-like, she walked toward Draco, eyeing him almost shyly as she advanced. His bride - the words made him feel old but so young, scared but so sure. He waited as she came to him, and for the first time that morning, he noticed the scent of narcissus in the room. Without his parents at his wedding, he felt alone, but also, as he looked at Hermione, complete.

Ann let her go, joining their hands before taking her seat behind them.

Dumbledore raised a hand and the music stopped. "Friends and loved ones," he said, "we meet to solemnize a promise made in hope, resolved here today in faith. These people, though so very young, have a power unmatched by their adversaries. It is love, that most ancient of magics. And we celebrate it now, with a hope for better days for all of us."

He looked out over the crowd - Ann Granger, Weasleys of all kinds, Professors McGonagall, Slughorn, Flitwick, Sprout, Madams Pomfrey and Hooch, most of the Hogwarts faculty, all of the Order but Remus, and last of all Auror Nymphadora Tonks, Draco's only kin to attend.

"Draco Lucius Malfoy," Dumbledore said in a low, officious voice, "take your wand in your right hand to inscribe the matrimonial charm after the manner of the most holy and eternal brotherhood of the Mitrians onto the living flesh of Hermione Jean Granger, if she wills it."

Hermione spoke. "I will."

Dumbledore nodded. "So be it."

Draco held his wand like a stylus, a familiar grip by now. Before he touched Hermione's bared flesh with it, he breathed on her arm and the lines he had written there the previous day flared to life, blue and burning. He spoke the words of the incantation Hermione had written, articulating carefully, picking his way through the dense and difficult Latin. As he spoke, he closed a line he had left incomplete yesterday, and began to write the French word for faith in the centre of the heart.

Before long, the room seemed to vibrate with magic, a barely audible hum, quiet enough that everyone seated in the chapel could hear Draco's voice resonating with it. Crookshanks purred in Harry's arms. And Hermione waited, her arm outstretched on the altar as Draco worked, her right hand held against her heart as it raced within her chest.

The "F" and the "o" of the word "Foi" were in place. Hermione thought Draco was sitting back, pausing for breath, examining his work from a different angle before completing the final letter. But instead of sitting back, he fell, collapsing not as if exhausted, but as if he'd been wounded. Without the sound of his voice speaking the incantation, the room went silent. Crookshanks trilled a question. Dumbledore laid a hand on Draco's shoulder, trying to keep him from sinking all the way onto his back. Draco's fingers opened, contorting into the shapes of claws, his wand clattering to the stone floor.

His right hand tore at the sleeve over his left forearm. Hermione fell to her knees beside him as he grit his teeth and fought to speak.

"Not now," he said. "Not now, please - no - "

She had seen him like this before. So had Ron, Pansy, and Harry. She looked up into their faces, horrified as she strained to hold Draco in her arms while he writhed at the foot of the altar.

"It's the Mark," she said. "He's calling. He's calling now."

Dumbledore stood up straight, speaking a name never before uttered in this hallowed space. "Voldemort."

* * *

Not long before Draco Malfoy collapsed at his wedding ceremony, Corban Yaxley came strutting into the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, Tim Granger's nearly revived body slung over his shoulder, Bellatrix Lestranger capering all around them in triumph, Peter Pettigrew scuttling back into his place behind the Dark Lord's chair.

The manor was not as they had left it - haunted and empty. As soon as Pettigrew sent word through the galleon in his pocket that they were flying back from Kent with the Muggle, the Dark Lord had commenced calling his servants - all of them, including the ones kept at Azkaban. Without resistance from dementors, he found he could orchestrate jail breaks at will, and he willed it today.

News of the Dark Lord's injury had leaked throughout the Death Eater ranks, shaking their confidence in him, fomenting discontent among them. There were whispers of dissension and defection. Even though Amycus Carrow had told him earlier that there was reason to believe the vanishing cabinet in Knockturn Alley might be operational, the Dark Lord had chosen to handle this business with the Mudblood's love charm first, securing the full confidence and allegiance from his followers before undertaking anything so bold as an attack on Hogwarts itself.

And so today, before dawn came with the sunlight that aggravated him so terribly of late, the Dark Lord had assembled his forces to witness the slaughter of the Mudblood witch responsible for the spell at the root of the rumors. In minutes, the Death Eaters would see for themselves that no enemy could elude the Dark Lord, and no magic could diminish him.

From Azkaban, Nott and Crabbe were there, free for the first time since the disaster at the Department of Mysteries. And most illustrious of all those liberated from the jail in the night was Lucius Malfoy, standing like a terrified stranger in his ancestral home, thin and faded, one hand closed over his wife's shoulder as she stood motionless at his side.

Next to the Dark Lord's chair stood Severus Snape, grave and exuding an anger to rival the Dark Lord's own. When Yaxley threw Tim Granger's sore, shivering body to the floor at the Dark Lord's feet, Tim looked up through the haze of blood and dirt on his face, into the iciness of Snape's glare.

"It's you," Tim said.

"Yes, Muggle scum," the Dark Lord gloated. "Your mongrel spawn's trusted teacher stands at my side and does my bidding. As soon as we learned you were coming, he sent word to her, baiting your daughter to come rescue you. At this moment, she is on her way from the north. Is she not, Severus?"

"She is my Lord. Coming by broom. She should be nearly here, arriving alone, as instructed, ever the star student."

The monster chuckled. "Very good. Yes, she has left the safety of that decrepit school and come for you, father dear. You may trust you will live long enough to see her cut in pieces on these very hearthstones."

He was laughing louder now, the rest of the Death Eaters joining in, awkwardly as if this was a scene out of a James Bond parody none of them would have seen.

"Her headmaster will never let her come," Tim coughed. "It's useless. Just kill me." He waved an arm at the wizards and witches lining the room. "They'll all be very impressed with that, I'm sure."

"Shut up," the Dark Lord said.

Tim doubled over in pain, caught in a spasm, some kind of curse, unseen and unspoken but sent out from the sickly, reptilian man in the armchair - their Dark Lord.

"Though," the reptile went on, "you ought to show better manners and greet your hosts properly, Granger. Allow me. Standing there, unmasked but for all of that ridiculous hair, is Mr. Lucius Malfoy. And next to him, his Madam Malfoy, a particular friend of your wife's, I believe."

Tim couldn't keep from raising his head to see them. Malfoy, an aged and wasted version of Draco, sneered down at him. His wife acknowledged Tim with a small, stony bow.

The Dark Lord tutted. "So uncouth, Granger. That's no way to introduce oneself. Get up." On the word "up," he launched a kick into Tim's stomach, not with magic but with his cold bony foot.

Snape seized Tim's arm and hoisted him to his feet, marching him to stand in front of a large, leaded window, where the assembled ranks could better see him. Outside the glass, not too far distant, a wolf howled.

"Yes, stand aside, Muggle," the Dark Lord said. "There is one more member of our ranks who has not yet been summoned, and without him, our gathering will be underwhelming indeed. He may be a comfort to you, Granger, standing at your side, joining in your cries as your daughter dies."

The Bellatrix witch was laughing at that, not a forced laugh, like the others', but with genuinely wicked glee.

"Look, Bella can hardly wait to be reunited with her nephew. Let's call him now, shall we?" With the tip of his wand, the Dark Lord pushed back the hem of his sleeve, baring the original, the darkest of Dark Marks burnt into his arm by his own hand. "You shall have the honour, Lucius," he said. "Come press your finger to your Lord's mark, and summon for us your son."

* * *

He thought he heard his father. It couldn't be true, but Draco imagined he heard his father's voice among the hundred that seemed to be calling his name. His father, along with Dumbledore, Potter, Pansy, McGonagall, and above them all, Hermione. The pain radiating from his Dark Mark, now consuming his entire body, was such that he couldn't see anything, only light moving over him. But he could still hear them.

They held his body to the floor as he thrashed, as he sucked in breath after breath but could never seem to get enough to scream out. In his mind, he saw the door of the chapel, opening two storeys above the floor of the Great Hall. If he could get free of the hands that held him, and find the door, he could throw himself down. He'd be free of them, able to run outside the school grounds and end the pain by answering the call. Even if he didn't survive the fall from the door, and smashed his skull against the stones of the floor below instead, at least the pain would end as he died there.

Whatever happened, the burning could not go on.

Dumbledore loomed over him, chanting in a mix of Latin and something older as the ghost at his shoulder echoed his words. Hermione watched them expectantly, hopefully, but whatever the headmaster was trying to do, it didn't seem to be working.

"He's not tiring," Harry said, struggling to keep Draco's right arm pinned to the ground. "He's getting stronger."

Hermione tried to catch Draco's face between her hands. "Draco, don't go," she said. "You made me promise we'd stay together today. You have to finish this."

He said nothing, but fought on.

"Draco, please - "

Pansy had recovered his wand and was handing it to Hermione. "Here, he needs this to finish," she said.

"Keep his wand away," Harry snapped. "He'll kill us all."

"Hold his arm still, Ron," Hermione said. "The left one. Pull up his sleeve and hold it for me."

The left, everyone knew, was the one with the mark on it, the one Ron had never been able to look at without revulsion. He gulped in a huge breath and laid his hands on it now. Fred and George were at his shoulder, helping to strip back the layers of clothing keeping the mark hidden, aghast, muttering under their breath as it came into sight.

Hermione closed her hand over the mark and Draco's spine straightened, as if he having a seizure.

"Draco Malfoy," she called to him, Dumbledore still chanting in the background. "You will stay with me and finish the spell. You do not go to them. You stay with me."

She bent her head and kissed the spot where she'd cast the first part of their charm, his part, the one torn open by the Dark Lord, left sticking to him. As she kissed it, broken blue lights flamed, glowing not only through his skin but out of it, licking over the surface of his arm, curling over the hands that held him, taking strength and care from them.

At his right side, Harry let go of Draco's arm as if thrown off it, his hand pressed hard against the scar on his own head.

Draco's spine relaxed, his chest heaving but no longer thrashing, his hands relaxing out of their claw-like poses. Now free, his right hand stopped lashing out, coming to rest gently against Hermione's face.

She spoke his name, caressing his hand as it cradled her. "Draco? Is it fading?"

The burning in the Dark Mark was indeed subsiding. Draco made a sound, not quite a word. His eyelids fluttered, slowing into a blink before he opened his eyes to see Hermione at his head, Dumbledore and the Friar behind her shoulders, Harry sitting on the floor beside him, Ron and the Weasley twins holding down his left arm. Pansy stood next to the Weasleys, clutching Draco's wand. Tonks and Ginny sat on each of his legs, Arthur Weasley lying on his stomach across Draco's feet, with what seemed like all the other wedding guests crowding behind them.

"Sorry," was what Draco said first.

"Let him up," Dumbledore said. "We may not have much time. It's best we continue without further apology, explanation, or delay. Resume your places, everyone."

Harry staggered to his feet, scooping up Crookshanks from where he'd been waiting on top of the altar. Hermione laid her arm on it again, reaching out to smooth Draco's hair as he took his wand from Pansy with a shaky hand.

"The incantation, Mr. Malfoy," Dumbledore prompted as he was about to begin again.

Draco closed his eyes. The incantation - it was gone. His mind was still reeling and though he remembered the words of the incantation, he couldn't be sure of every delicate conjugation. He opened his eyes, looking pleadingly across the altar to Hermione, exhausted, terrified, and so sorry. He didn't need to tell her he'd forgotten.

She had not. She spoke the next line, slowly and carefully, exactly where he'd left off. He repeated it back to her. They said it together, their voices overlapping, line by line as he drew the last of the inscription, and dotted the "i."

The wedding guests let out a collective sigh of immense relief as Draco set his wand aside and turned to take Crookshanks from Harry. The hum of magic had returned to the room as he and Hermione had spoken the incantation. It fell into a rhythm with the purring of the kneazle-cat. Draco bowed his face into Crookshanks's fur for a moment, pausing to take in the mounting energy, gathering strength from it. He pressed on the pad of Crookshanks's paw to expose a claw, and with the tiniest scratch, a line of fresh, red blood stood out of Hermione's arm.

His part finished, Crookshanks sprung free from Draco's arms, trotting away.

Harry's colour was rising, his scarred forehead breaking out in sweat. Ginny took his hand. Ron held him by the elbow, and even Dumbledore edged closer to him, all of them knowing he was about to be called on, again, to suffer for his connection to Voldemort.

He and Voldemort would meet again today. Not now - this ceremony was for casting the charm, not the weaponizing of it. That would come later, after the rising of the sun, after the rest of Draco and Hermione's bond was sealed in private. They would seek their enemy out together, when he was weakest. All of that was coming, but what was about to happen here, as the charm was set, would hurt Harry all the same. But it would also hurt Voldemort, wherever he was, whatever he was doing.

Draco held Hermione's arm in his hand, bowing toward it over the altar to consecrate their matrimonial charm with a kiss.


	46. Chapter 46

**AN: Posting even earlier than usual in case things get crazy this week. A longer chapter than usual, but I hope you find it a good investment of your time. Thanks for the continuing feedback. Reviews make stories better!**

As Draco Malfoy knelt at his wedding altar to inscribe a matrimonial charm on Hermione Granger's arm, hundreds of miles away, the Dark Lord closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He held it as Lucius Malfoy pressed his forefinger against the black scar tissue of the mark on his cold, gray arm. He let it out slowly, rapturously at the touch of Lucius's warm hand.

"Ah, Lucius," he said, eyes still closed, head tipped back. "You have been away from us for too long."

Lucius withdrew his hand, bowing as the Dark Lord opened his eyes with a low growl of satisfaction. "Your son as well. I anticipate his arrival with great eagerness."

"As do I," Lucius said. "Thank you, my Lord, for bringing him back to us."

The Dark Lord attempted a smile. "Yes, it will be a joyful reunion for the Malfoy family, won't it? All three of you, living here in love, together again." He waved at Snape, the favoured deputy at his side. "While I'm thinking of it, Severus..."

Snape sank to one knee on the floor. "Yes, my Lord?"

"I may get caught up in my many plans for the coming day - the Mudblood, the cabinet, so much to do. You must not let me forget to share that memory of yours with Lucius. You know the one. It was you who brought it to me, from his wife's bedchamber."

A snicker ran through the room, sincere but vicious laughter at the expense of Lucius Malfoy, a high man brought low. He hung his head but Narcissa only held hers higher.

The laughter died abruptly as the Dark Lord stood from his chair to pace. "Young Draco delays his coming," he said.

Snape stood upright. "If he is in the castle, my Lord, he will not be able to reach you until he escapes the grounds. It may take some minutes."

The Dark Lord didn't seem to hear, growing more agitated with every pass of his pacing. "It is too long. Too long." He stopped, raising a finger. "Did you do this, Lucius? Did you sabotage the call as you made it? Is this some ploy to keep your son from his destiny?"

There was only one laugh this time, Narcissa Malfoy's, a loud single note of ridicule at the mention of her husband doing anything so brave and noble as plotting against the Dark Lord to save their son.

The Dark Lord rounded on her, his finger still pointing. "You have something to add, Madam Malfoy?" He was moving toward her, his finger scratching at the air in front of him as he came.

He stopped.

In the centre of the room, he stopped suddenly, struck. Cringing where he stood, he reeled, as if from the impact of a silent curse. He stumbled sideways, pulling his already wounded hand into his chest, gnashing his teeth.

Wormtail took half of a step forward, as if to rush to steady him, but then retreated behind his chair.

A shriek of anger and pain went out from the wounded Dark Lord, ending in a panting, murderous demand. "Who has done this?" he rasped.

His eyes swept over his horde of followers, arriving back where they started, at Narcissa Malfoy. Black stains were seeping through the white gauze dressing twisted around his hand as he advanced toward her again, hissing, "You."

Bellatrix was bleating at his side. "My Lord, my Lord!" she was saying. "Cissie wouldn't dare. No one who knows your power would dare. But the Muggle man - he's not a Muggle. I've seen him steal a wizard's wand and use it against him. And now he's done this to you. I should have known. I should have spilled his entrails in the streets - "

"Silence!" the Dark Lord shouted over her. He swiveled away from Narcissa, looking to Tim Granger instead. The man still stood where Snape had set him, in front of a huge window made of small, diamond panes of glass.

The Dark Lord smirked. "Not a Muggle?"

Tim raised his hands. "Oh, yes. Certainly a Muggle. No one to worry about. Full Muggle, through and through. Pure Muggle here."

The Dark Lord spat at Tim's feet. "He calls himself - pure."

A cry of disgusted protest rang out from among the Death Eaters, all of them only too happy to join in calling for the Muggle to answer for the attack on the Dark Lord rather than one of their own.

"I would have let you wait," he called over the roar of voices, creeping wounded toward the window where Tim stood. "I would have let you see your daughter one more time before I killed her. I would have taken you with me to ride your magic cabinet back into Hogwarts. You might have stood a chance. But you dared to attack me, deceive me, insult me..."

What the Dark Lord didn't hear over his own voice and the taunting and jeering of his Death Eaters as they clamoured for Tim's murder, was the creaking of metal and the cracking of glass.

And further, in the darkness beyond the glass, the cries of wolves were rising. Fenrir Greyback heard it, the faraway voices wolfish and more than wolfish. His ears pricked, straining to hear. Lithe and canine, he leapt into the centre of the room, to the Dark Lord's side. He was shouting warnings, calling for quiet, all of it unheeded as the crowd called for blood.

Greyback's spectacle only further distracted the room from Narcissa Malfoy as she glared hard at the window, her eyes tracing the edges of the panes of glass behind Tim Granger.

Only Severus Snape watched her, whispering under his breath. "Cissa, wait."

The Dark Lord took up his wand in his left hand, pinched awkwardly between his fingers, pointed at Hermione's father. He thrust the werewolf aside in disgust. And as he turned back to the window, his wand drawn back behind his head to execute Tim Granger, the glass shattered, filling the room, dashing against the back of Tim's coat. The room was chaotic with cries of pain and alarm as Tim fell forward, toward the furious, howling form of the Dark Lord.

Tim had clenched his eyes shut and steeled himself to be torn apart when a pair of long arms in a shabby coat caught him from behind. Tim struggled in their hold, dragged out into cold dark gardens noisy with the calls of wolves. He fought, but the arms had a supernatural strength, and Tim was so very tired. Surely it had been enough already, and he could now let the darkness overtake him.

All at once, there was no darkness, only fiery red light. It enfolded both himself and the shabby, strong arms that held him, warm and soft like feathery wings, rising with a flash, soaring into silence.

* * *

At the altar of the Hogwarts chapel, Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger were nearly married. All that was left to finish casting the matrimonial charm was for her to let him kiss the inscription he had made on her arm.

As he made himself ready, Ginny and Ron took Harry to sit down on the front pew, holding him, ready to shelter and comfort him against the pain and fear that would descend when his connection to Voldemort flared to life, reacting against the casting of the charm.

Harry knew the violent resistance was coming, and yet he sat in the chapel with his friends anyway, not only supporting, but helping them to cast the charm. Unlike Voldemort, he would bear it, suffer it as an act of love for his friends and their families, their futures. And through this, he would survive it.

Harry's sacrifice was selfless and vital, but Draco's back was turned to it as he looked down at Hermione's arm, cradling it in his hand on the altar. With her free hand, she touched his face, drawing his gaze from her arm to her eyes. No one had given them instructions or permission to do it, but no one had forbidden it either, and even if anyone had, it may not have stopped them. Leaning over the altar, they kissed each other the way Hermione had always dreamed of kissing her husband at her wedding. Her husband, tall and elegant, standing with her before people who loved her, pledging his love, fighting off devils, and now, kissing her with soft, warm lips. A tear slipped from beneath her lashes, running against his face, her hand on the back of his head, holding him close.

"I love you," he whispered, his mouth on hers. She said it back, sliding her hand away from the nape of his neck, letting him bend toward her arm again. His lips, still wet from her kiss, pressed against her flesh.

Foi.

The inscription flashed into view both on her arm and above it, as if projected onto the high, vaulted ceiling of the chapel. The blue light crackled like lightning, playing over the stone arches, down the columns, and into the floor. Draco stepped around the altar to take Hermione in his arms, holding her as they watched the light flashing over the dark windows, the candlelit room now bright with magical light.

They couldn't see it themselves, but as they stood entwined in each other's arms before their friends and loved ones, they seemed to glow, not drifting wispy white like ghosts, but dazzling like platinum, like angels - exhilarating and marvelous to see.

Their light reached into Harry's darkness, penetrating his eyelids where he sat with his forehead pressed into Ginny's shoulder, his fist in his mouth, his hand gripped hard on Ron's arm, willing himself to weather the struggle inside him. Somewhere, Voldemort was wracked with pain, consumed with rage, lashing out to kill. Harry felt the rage, his body shaking with the force of it, but in the arms of his friends and the glow of newly sworn love, he reached out and past it. The storm was abating.

The matrimonial charm was cast.

The lights were fading, retreating to where they'd originated in Hermione's arm. Harry was loosening his grip on Ginny and Ron. The guests were letting go of their own heavy tension, their postures relaxing...

When all at once, at the back of the chapel, and with a deafening crack and a plume of red flames, Fawkes apparated into the room. In his talons, he gripped two men, their faces marked with bleeding cuts, their hair full of broken glass.

Hermione called out from the altar. "Dad!" she cried as the bird winged away.

Ann Granger was on her feet. "Tim?"

Tonks reached them first, stumbling to a stop in front of Remus, as if she wanted to embrace him, but didn't dare risk driving any more glass into him.

He grinned, wiping at the blood on his already scarred cheeks.

"Remus, bless you. You've found him," Hermione said, coming down the aisle, her dress hiked up to her knees as she ran. Draco couldn't follow, slumping exhausted onto the pew beside Ron and Harry instead. Ron dropped a hand on each of their shoulders. "Well done, mates."

At the back of the chapel, Hermione and Ann examined Tim. Ann furrowed her brow. "Tim darling, are you sure you're alright?"

"What? Don't I look alright?" he laughed. He pulled at Ann's hand as he sat up, looking to the head of the chapel, scanning the room through his still blood encrusted eyes. "Did I miss it? The wedding?"

Remus nudged him. "Of course you did, that was the point, old boy. You kept them busy while this fine bunch here got the spell safely off. I've been watching you from closeby since they picked you up in Kent, holding back as long as I could, waiting for them to realize they were being played which, thanks to your impressive wits, they didn't."

Tim was squinting at Remus, trying to remember if they'd met before. Remus extended his hand, introducing himself at last.

"Lupin?" Tim said. "Explains why you've taken the trouble to cultivate such a convincing wolf call, I suppose."

Remus laughed and shook out his hair. "Well, Dr. Granger, congratulations on your extraordinary daughter. And best of luck with - er, your son-in-law."

At the word "son-in-law," Hermione stood up, looking desperately around the chapel. Draco's slump had developed into a full-blown lie-down on the front pew. He was stretched there, weary and waiting for her, but out of her view. She dropped the shard of glass she had just pulled out of her father's hair.

"Draco?" The sound of her voice was high and tremulous, heart-rending. "Mum, where is he? I promised I'd stay with him but I didn't and now he's - "

Draco sat up quickly, jumping to his feet and rushing toward her. "I'm here, darling. I'm here, I didn't leave."

Professor Dumbledore met them where they crashed into one another in the centre aisle, Hermione's face buried in Draco's robes as she tried not to cry.

"Friends, it appears we must not keep the newlyweds any longer," Dumbledore said, addressing the entire room. "May I say, it has been a most moving but far too eventful wedding service. No dancing this morning, I'm afraid, Professor McGonagall."

She nodded.

He stepped closer to the couple, speaking more discreetly, even winking. "Take some time alone. About one hour, until the sun has properly risen. By then, Mr. Potter and I will be ready in the astronomy tower. For now, since it is such a special day, I will grant you the use of my privilege to apparate without the castle, and send you off to your quarters."

He stepped back, his arms extended. "Friends, loved ones, guests," he announced. "Join me in coming forward to bid our brave but exhausted Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy farewell for now!"

The crowd came forward in something like a line to congratulate them. There were hearty pats on the shoulder from an unending stream of teachers and Weasleys. Hermione kissed both Pansy and Ron, throwing herself into Harry's arms with teary thanks. For the first time, Ann kissed Draco's cheek. Then Tim faced him, bloody and beaten and beaming with happiness all the same.

Overwhelmed, Draco's knees buckled, and as if he'd been watching, waiting for such a moment, that was when Dumbledore apparated them away.

* * *

In the drawing room of Malfoy manor, the Dark Lord stood enraged in the wind blowing through the shattered window. Fenrir Greyback had sprung through the jagged opening, chasing after the Muggle and whatever had snatched him. But the Dark Lord knew already that the Granger man was gone. This assembly he had called to prove his power and control was now a showcase of his failure to contain a lone, defenseless Muggle.

Someone must answer for it.

He called for silence and the room lapsed into a terrified quiet. "Malfoy Manor tears itself to pieces for one reason only," he began. "At the behest of a family so pathetic and cowardly they dare not act for themselves."

He turned from the window. "Lucius."

Malfoy fell to his knees, sputtering. "My Lord - Lord, the Muggle - he is not of our family - "

"Lies!" he roared. "He is. Your son makes him so, does he not? Let us ask your wife. She knows." Again, the Dark Lord was advancing on Narcissa Malfoy, broken glass snapping and crunching beneath his feet. "Madam, you destroyed this window and set him free, as you did his wife."

Her lips quivered, her mouth opening to speak.

"My Lord," Snape said, snapping to life, clipping across the floor, stepping cat-like between shards of glass, approaching the Dark Lord. "From the vantage of many of us here, it was clear that the werewolf Remus Lupin, a known operative for Dumbledore's terrorist organization, stole the Granger man from the window. Ask them. They saw it. Greyback has given chase. In light of that, the Malfoys - "

"Are complicit," the Dark Lord finished with a snarl, lunging toward Narcissa.

"Wait!" A screech rang out, Bellatrix Lestrange's desperate voice. "It wasn't my sister, my Lord. It was him!" With both hands, she pointed at Severus Snape. "As the glass was breaking, he was standing here muttering something to himself, speaking a spell."

The Dark Lord almost laughed. "Severus? Bella, no more of your jealous slander."

"I swear I saw it!" she railed. "Use Veritaserum on me, or legilimency, or draw the memory from my mind. I give it willingly. It was not our Cissie that broke him out, it was Snape."

"Ridiculous," Snape hissed. "Everyone in this room was speaking something when the glass cracked. The stars only know who said what."

"Look at him wriggling," Bellatrix said, sidling closer to the Dark Lord. "This is his true form. Ask him, my Lord. Ask him what it was he said when the glass smashed, and why."

With the tip of his wand, the Dark Lord pushed her aside, clearing a space between Snape and himself. "Interesting," he began. "Which of you was it, Severus? Who broke the window? Madam Malfoy, or yourself?"

Snape's posture stiffened. "My Lord, there must be two dozen people in this room. It need not be a question limited to Madam Malfoy or myself."

"Why not, Severus?" the Dark Lord smirked. "If it's not you, speak up and accept my proposition that it must be her. You have nothing to lose in doing so."

"Neither do I have anything to hide, My Lord," Snape said. "I will gladly participate in a full interrogation of all of us here, Madam Malfoy included, of course."

The Dark Lord was laughing mirthlessly. "No, no, my faithful servant. There is no need for all of that. I ask again. Is the culprit you, or Madam Malfoy?"

Snape said nothing as the Dark Lord placed himself in the centre of the space between Snape and Narcissa. "What do you say, Lucius? Shall we determine the matter in a trial by duel, with you fighting Severus in your wife's place, of course?"

Lucius Malfoy's eyes widened, his complexion turning green. "My Lord - but - I - "

"No, no, Lucius. Stand down," he said. "Amusing as that would be, it would not serve my purposes. Yes, my purposes - they are shifting, changing. With the vanishing cabinet operational, my need for operatives inside Hogwarts - both students and teachers - diminishes considerably. And what's more, I cannot abide a deputy who cannot renounce love."

The Dark Lord stretched out his arms, addressing all of his assembled followers. "I have warned each of you, yet in this, you have all defied me - with the exception of Severus, the most excellent servant I ever had. Cowardly as he is, Lucius was better before his marriage and son. Amycus lies to me to protect Alecto. Yes, don't deny it. Even you Bella," he said, caressing her face with the back of his hand, "you betrayed your husband, and disowned one sister for me, but it made you all the more driven to protect the sister who remained."

She bowed her head, whimpering in shame, but not arguing.

"You were my one hope, Severus. But now I discover you in love with another man's wife. Yes, there's no other explanation for your bizarre reluctance to sacrifice her for your own innocence. Coveting her and her son and this house - all of that would have sufficed. I would have given it to you, but you could not hold yourself there. And now, I cannot keep you at my side. I have a perfect servant, no more. "

"What about him?" It was Narcissa herself. She had marched to where Wormtail cowered behind his master's empty chair, seizing him by the collar and dragging him into the open. "Our Lord has one servant who loves no one. And this is what he's like." She pushed Wormtail to his knees on the broken glass in front of the Dark Lord. "This is what he wants for us," she told the Death Eaters. "He will never glorify us. He wants us like this - "

"You will hold your tongue!" the Dark Lord wailed. "And you will watch your lover die!"

He raised his wand at Severus Snape. "Avada Ke - "

The spell died unfinished in his mouth as another unspoken curse broke over him. It was like the first attack of the day but stronger, more sustained, knocking him to the floor. It burned the gauze dressing from his wounded hand with bright blue fire, baring his shriveled arm. No one stirred to aid him. He twisted with pain and rage on the glass-strewn floor. In Hogwarts castle, the matrimonial charm had just been cast.

He was not dying but he was suffering exquisitely. His arms twitched and jerked, one hand still clenched around his wand, wringing out the dregs of the unfinished killing curse. It flashed green and malformed across Narcissa Malfoy's drawing room, striking her squarely in the spine as she threw herself in front of Severus Snape.

He caught her in his arms, staring into her upturned face, shocked. Her eyes returned his gaze before drifting closed.

The partial curse hadn't killed her but she was terribly hurt. "Enough," she whispered. "I am now ready to leave this house." With the last of her strength, she clutched her wand, and disapparated them both.

Snape was still holding her against himself when they materialized outside the gates of Hogwarts. It was barely daylight now. The ice on the lake glittered through leafless trees. Inside the castle, the wedding would be over. Narcissa's head lolled in his arms as he gathered her up to carry her to the school.

"Foolish, Cissa. Incomprehensibly stupid of you," he said as they went.

"Severus," she said, almost too weakly to hear. "I've left Lucius."

"So I saw."

"I came to you."

He huffed. "You did, at the worst possible time and for no good reason. Had I survived, I would have continued to protect Draco, not that he may need much of that now the matrimonial spell - "

She lifted a finger to his lips. "Quiet, Severus, you know Draco is not the reason."

He obeyed, keeping quiet, continuing to labour up the path to the castle with her body limp in his arms.

She batted one hand against his shoulder. "Conjure something to carry me," she said.

"I will not."

"Stubborn man - "

"Because I want you here," he said, tossing her slightly higher in his hold.

Her face was closer to his now, and she turned it up to him again, her eyes still closed, traces of the pain of the curse visible in her mouth and brow. His pace slowed as fleetingly, lightly, he kissed both - her forehead and then her lips.

Her head drooped sideways as she sighed against his shoulder. "Accept me, Severus. I have given everything you could have asked of me."

"I asked for one thing only."

"And you have it," she said, opening her eyes to see him, dark and grim, looking not at all like herself. "You have my love."

Snape's heart felt as large as his entire chest again as he shouldered through the school doors, stepping into the Floo in the entrance hall, and out of the Floo in the chapel. The bride and groom were gone but the wedding guests remained, drinking coffee and eating breakfast scones.

Ann gasped at the sight of the blond hair and the lavish gown the nasty chemistry teacher clasped in his arms. "Cissa?"

Snape ignored her. "Professor Dumbledore, Poppy. Help."

* * *

**AN: OK, this is the beginning of a Dramione honeymoon. I stand by my T rating and think this stays wholesome. But it is about their relationship becoming a married one, so if you ABSOLUTELY do not want to read anything like that, skip to the next chapter now. **

Minutes before his mother arrived with Professor Snape in the Hogwarts chapel, Draco and Hermione materialized in seventh floor married quarters neither of them had ever seen before. Professor Dumbledore had disapparated them from the chapel just as Draco's knees were giving out during all the congratulations, meaning they appeared in their new suite tumbling, falling onto a large, downy bed, their arms still closed around each other.

They lay motionless beside one another for a moment, disoriented until Hermione laughed.

Draco groaned. "Right into bed? That corny old Dumbledore - "

"Come on," she was still laughing. "It's sweet."

"No, it's all wrong," Draco was saying. He was trying to sit up but she wouldn't release her arms from around his neck. "This is not how it's supposed to go," he insisted. "We're supposed to start OUTSIDE the door and then I carry you inside, over the threshold. It's called a bridal carry for a reason."

She ran a hand through his hair, fluffing it out of its slick wedding style. "Draco, you're knackered. No one expects you to carry anyone anywhere when you can hardly stand," she said, leaning in to nuzzle his neck. She took his chin between her thumb and forefinger, tilting his face. "Honestly, stop looking longingly at the door. You can carry me inside next time. That carrying bit is just more patriarchal nonsense anyway."

He smirked, scoffing. "Yes, darling, more feminism in the pillow talk please."

"You knew what I was when you married me," she said, nipping at his earlobe.

"I did, and it is all incredibly hot," he said. He was getting over his disappointment about their entrance, relaxing into the mattress beside her, moaning into her hair as her mouth worked against his throat.

She pulled away, rubbing her thumb along the mark she hadn't meant to leave on his skin. "If you really are you're too tired, we don't have to do this right away - "

He cut her off by pulling her underneath himself, pressing all of him against her, her body sinking into the mattress. "Oh, we are doing this right away."

She uttered her seldom heard giggle as he settled in to snog her as a married man, mouth open, devouring, hands on her front, moving from her waist upward.

"Wait," he said, pulling himself back.

She whimpered and fought to hold him close. "No, no more waiting. No more monks. No more ceremonies, just - no."

"Let me get my wand for a second," he said. "It's important."

She frowned. "Your wand?" she moved her hips against him. "Isn't that it there?"

His already flushed face blushed redder as she moved. "Uh, close, but no."

Her eyes widened.

"I told you, I'm not too tired," he said, finding his wand in his sleeve. "Now hold still while I magic our heirs away for a little longer."

She batted his chest. "You don't need to do that. Mum gave me those pills. You remember."

"Look, they took the bridal carry away from me. Don't take away a boy's dream of casting his first contraception spell too." He pushed himself upright, onto his knees, sliding his arms out of his robes, his waistcoat, and untying his fancy white tie to toss all of it onto the floor before clearing his throat and flourishing his wand.

She laughed but kept still, exaggerating her awe at his skill with the contraception spell. "That was lovely," she said when the pink sparks puffed between them.

"Wasn't it?" he said, throwing his wand onto the floor with the clothes he'd shed. "Those bloody Weasley twins thought they'd save the day and teach me how, minutes before the wedding. Weasley himself looked like he needed to see it, but my father taught me that back in fifth year. Must be the age the old creeper was when he first got at it himself."

"Do shut up," she said, pulling him by his shirtfront, down on top of herself. "Can we agree not to talk about Weasleys or parents for the next little while? Hmm?"

He grunted his consent as he settled onto her differently this time, fitting himself between her knees. Her heart crashed at the contact, even through her skirts, and she was finally speechless, dumbfounded by her own natural, uncalculated responses, her hips tipping, her back arching beneath him.

"All mine," he murmured against her neck. "So soft and beautiful."

"You know, there is something different about this than the way I always imagined it would be," she managed to say.

The best he could do to ask her what she meant as he tugged her dress away from her shoulder, kissing its smooth round dome, was to utter another low grunt.

"I always pictured our first night as - well - as a night," she said. "You know, shadowy and mysterious. But the sun is up now. I can see all of you, and you can see all of me."

"Not yet I can't," he said against her shoulder, his hand beneath her, groping for a zipper at the back of her dress.

"Draco…"

He brought his face back to hers, looking into her eyes, the sunlight setting off the amber flecks in the shimmering brown. He laced their fingers together, holding both of her hands, her knuckles against the mattress next to her ears as he hovered over her. Low rays of sunlight, barely clearing the horizon beamed through the window, shining through his hair, lighting his skin.

She swallowed, working to control her disordered breath. "Draco, I'm not afraid of you," she said. "Not at all. I trust you. I adore you. But this..."

He nodded and with a shift in his shoulders and hips - graceful and fluid, like a pirouette, or a quick turn on a broom - he was on his back and she was on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips.

"About this," he said, his hands on her hips now. "This only happens if you want it."

"I want it."

He grinned and sat up far enough to kiss her, the muscles in his lower abdomen flexing against her body where she sat on him, sending her heart crashing again, her stomach flipping, and something else churning inside her, lower and stranger.

"Good," he said. "And now that this is happening, it only happens as quickly or as slowly as you want it to."

He lifted his hand from her hip and eased Pansy's shiny clip out of her hair, tossing it into the pile he'd been making on the floor. Her hair fell forward, engulfing both of their faces.

From behind a mass of curls, she was laughing again, and with none of his grace, she was fighting to roll onto her back, bringing him with her. By the time she succeeded, he was lost in kissing her, long and sweet, his body pressed urgently against hers until she couldn't resist the urgency herself. He was breathing her breath, sighing her name. She was ready.

When there was nothing left to add to the pile of clothing on the floor, he pulled the blankets over them, closing off everything outside their bed. Their solitude would not last for long, but for a little while, there was no one else - not in the castle, not far off in the manor, not in the entire country. At last there were only two, less than two, one.


	47. Chapter 47

**AN: Still a bit of honeymoon here. Still T rated but if you don't want to read it, skip to the first break. Thank you for the reviews. They mean so much and keep the story flowing.**

Tangled in new white sheets, lit with early morning sun, Draco lay quietly, eyes closed, his breaths moving in deep, regular rhythms, like sleep. Hermione lay curved across his chest, her head on his shoulder, his hand open and warm on her back, beneath her hair. He didn't move as she trailed her fingers from the end of his collar bone, over the rise of his chest, the hollow of his waist, down his side as far as she could reach. There was so much more of him, out of her reach, and from now on, all of it was a part of her.

Their first time was over but she could still feel him with her, as if he'd never left. Her mother hadn't told her to expect that. Maybe it was special. Would it ever end?

This morning, every touch between them had been at once familiar and brand new. She inhaled the smell of him with every breath, as if his scent was imprinted on her own body. Sleepy as she was, her eyes were open, fascinated, awed as she watched her hand moving across his skin.

How could this be real? After years of hiding and waiting and fighting for him, could it be true that they were together like this, nothing between them anymore? Her heart might burst if she didn't kiss him, so she turned her face to brush the line of his jaw with her mouth, delicately, so that if he was truly, profoundly asleep, she wouldn't disturb him.

He stirred and tightened his arms around her, awake. He hadn't asked her if it hurt. It had. He could tell. Nothing he did could have kept it from hurting her. And when he pulled her closer now, tipping his mouth toward her ear, what he said was, "I'm sorry, my girl."

She smiled against his neck. "You are sweet," she said, "but don't you dare be sorry."

The sunlight was bright but the air still had the chill of a winter morning. Draco tucked the blankets over her shoulders. "It will get better," he said. "I promise."

She moved against him, warm and sleek, smiling archly. She had a secret. The feeling that he was still with her had grown from a curiosity to a craving. "Yes, it will get better," she purred, "beginning now…"

* * *

Dumbledore had asked them to meet him and Harry in the astronomy tower an hour after they left their wedding ceremony, and they might have slept through the appointment were it not for Crookshanks finding his way into their room, walking over the covers on their bed, meowing his disapproval as if he himself wasn't also known to sleep days away.

Late, they dressed and dashed off, climbing breathless up the stairs to the tower, to find Dumbledore alone, gazing off into the hills outside, looking quite at his leisure.

"Sorry, Professor," Hermione began. "Oh - where is Harry?"

"Resting," he said, turning to them, his expression not set in a battle-mode but pleasantly twinkling. "This morning's events were particularly taxing for him and he's gone to rest. We will require his optimal strength later."

Draco knew this, of course, yet even after what they'd been through together lately, his readiness to be annoyed with Harry was still quick to flare. He strained to control it, a muscle over his cheekbone twitching in his face. Bloody Potter, off napping while Draco's mother was stuck in the manor with the Dark Lord on the same morning he had to refuse to answer the call of his Dark Mark.

Dumbledore seemed to understand. "Several circumstances have changed since you left the chapel this morning," he said. "We believe the Death Eaters now know Dr. Granger came to London through the vanishing cabinet in our Room of Hidden Things. They may move to use it very soon, which may turn out to be to our advantage in that - " he cut himself off. "I'm getting ahead of myself. All I mean to say is that, in light of these changes, our plans require recalculations. Please bear with me and my friends in the Order, as we take a little more care and time - "

"Time?" Draco interrupted. "There isn't any more time. My mother - "

"That is one of the other circumstances that has changed," Dumbledore said, speaking over Draco's outburst. "Your mother is now here, at the school. Come along, I will bring you to her."

They followed the headmaster down, down to the ground floor. His pace set theirs, keeping Draco from running ahead. "We have news of your father as well," he said as they went. "Last night, his comrades broke him out of Azkaban - "

"What? He's here?" Draco blurted.

Ever patient with the interruptions, Dumbledore said, "No. He remains at your home, with Voldemort. Your mother arrived here separately, wounded," he paused, "and in the care of Professor Snape."

The explanation gave rise to more questions than it answered but the doors to the hospital wing were opening in front of them now. Inside, Ann Granger sat in a chair next to a cot, speaking with quiet intensity to the person lying in it. This was not her husband, who had simply eaten a scone, washed the blood from his face and hands, and gone to bed upstairs. This was Narcissa Malfoy.

He knew the headmaster had been taking him to see her, but Draco gasped at the sight of his mother all the same, barely able to call out, "Mother" before he fell to his knees beside her cot, his face on her stomach, her arms cradling his head.

"Draco," she answered, pulling his face toward hers, kissing his cheeks.

He looked her over as she lay neatly tucked under the sheet of the hospital cot. "He hurt you?"

"Yes, but I'm safe now," she said. "Don't worry, my angel. It was a malformed curse, hastily and badly cast, not lethal, but they're keeping me here for treatment anyway. Your Professor Snape insisted - "

Beside her, Ann Granger gave a loud cough.

"And you," Narcissa went on, "You brilliant boy, you didn't answer the Dark Lord's call. You resisted. It's not supposed to be possible, yet here you are, alive and well. You are well, aren't you? I don't know that anyone has ever succeeded in resisting the call before."

"I didn't do it alone, Mother. I couldn't have. But with - "

He left off speaking when she didn't seem to be listening, her attention consumed instead with tipping his head between her hands, feeling along his arms and hands, inspecting him for signs of harm. As she examined him, she sniffed, lightly at first and then more deeply. "Your smell, she said. "There's someone else in it…" Her voice trailed off, her eyes moving at last to the girl who had come to stand beside Ann.

Draco was too overcome to begin, so Ann took over. She cleared her throat. "Allow me, Cissa," she began. "Madam Malfoy, meet Madam Malfoy - my daughter, Hermione, your daughter-in-law."

Hermione extended her hand. Narcissa regarded it for a moment, her lips parted, her eyes glistening. Draco's eyes darted between them as he sat up and out of the way, clearing the space between them.

"Thank you, Ann. We have met before," Narcissa said, raising her hand to take Hermione's. "And for my conduct at that time, I am truly sorry." Her fingers closed over Hermione's hand, as she lifted it toward her face and kissed it.

Hermione bowed her head, remembering the particularly awful shouting match between Draco and Harry at Madam Malkins at the beginning of the school year. "Draco and I weren't forthcoming with our relationship that day, putting me also somewhat at fault for the unpleasantness. You needn't apologize, Madam."

Ann scoffed. "I didn't mean for the pair of you to call each other Madam. Really, Hermione."

"Well, what do you say, Ann? What shall they call each other?" Draco said, deciding in that moment what he would call his mother-in-law. "I won't have my wife calling you 'Mother,'" he said to Narcissa. "It's a bit icky."

Narcissa tapped him on the tip of his nose. "Now Draco, it's time you learned to share your mother. There's a good boy. I'm sorry I never gave you a sister. Things might have been easier for you."

"Hermione is NOT my sister," he said.

It was true, of course, but Hermione was still squaring her shoulders demanding, "Draco Malfoy, since when do you issue edicts about what you will or won't have your wife doing?"

He groaned, his voice rising as he said. "I didn't mean it that way."

She tossed her head. "You'd better not have."

"Of course I didn't. You can do what you like. You always do."

"Enough with the flirting, you two," Ann interjected, snickering at them.

"We're not - " Hermione began, but she had already raised her hand to the base of her throat, hiding her rising colour. She pursed her lips as she looked at Draco across the bed, his eyebrows drawn together, his mouth, like hers, set as if he wanted to look stern but his lips were too full, too bruised from their morning together, too soft and -

"Cissa, will do nicely as a term of address between us," Narcissa said, breaking through the newlyweds' connection. "You may call me that, Hermione, until Draco grows up a little more." She pinched his cheek, a gesture he might have objected to if he wasn't so relieved to see her free from the manor, and if he didn't have a sense that he might need to save his indignation for things that really mattered, like the subject he was about to raise.

He began with a heavy sigh. "And what shall Hermione call Father?" he asked.

Narcissa sighed in return.

Ann stood. "I'll leave you to it. Take care," she said, squeezing Narcissa's hand in parting, as if she already knew what had to be said.

Hermione turned to follow her mother out of the hospital wing but Ann pushed her down into the chair she'd just vacated instead. "Stay with your family, darling. They need you."

Narcissa began. "Regrettably, Draco, the title most fitting your father at this time is that of 'fugitive.' He is unlawfully at large after a Death Eater jailbreak."

"So I've been told. Have you seen him?" Draco asked. "Is he alright?"

She nodded. "He is thin and tired but unharmed. I did see him. But by then, the Dark Lord had already led him to believe my relationship with Severus Snape was of a salacious nature. He would hardly speak to me."

Draco's face had taken on an alarming pallor. Hermione left her chair to stand by his side, her hands on his shoulders. "It's a lie," he said. "Poor father. We have to tell him. His mind is being poisoned against us."

"Not against us, Draco," she said. "Just me. Your father still thinks of you as he ever did."

It was an odd, ambiguous comment that gave Draco no comfort.

"And in fairness," Narcissa continued, "Though the Dark Lord slanders me, I have come to rely on Severus more than I ought to. It began when your father was taken away and I pressed Severus to make an Unbreakable Vow to protect you. Since then, I have relied on him physically, for our safety. From the beginning, you have been well aware of that. You may be sure that any rumours of Severus being my lover in a fully carnal way are the Dark Lord's lies, nothing more. But apart from that, it is true that I have formed an emotional attachment to Severus. He is my sanity, my only true peace."

Draco pushed himself away from the edge of his mother's bed, Hermione steadying him. "Peace? Severus Snape?"

"Draco," his mother said, in a gently scolding tone. "That is how someone else would speak of him. That is not you. He's meant so much to you, since you've been at school. Why, when you hexed that girl's teeth, he wouldn't even punish you for it. Remember? You were so touched - "

"Mother," he sputtered as Hermione leaned over his shoulder to smack a kiss on his cheek. "That was very wrong of him."

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "Wrong, but he did it for you all the same. He defies whatever powers he has to for you. It's the same with me. I trust him. While your father," she closed her eyes, steeling herself. "Your father serves only himself. He defies nothing in our defense. Instead, he offers us as sacrifices to his own vanities and fears."

"No, father is misled and wrong but - "

She raised her hand. "You don't need to answer for him, Draco. His wicked selfishness is not yours. And I won't have it be mine any longer either."

She broke off, biting her lip and swallowing her urge to cry. She seized Draco's left hand. "The day I sat in your father's ancestral home and watched as the monster he'd traded you to in exchange for his life branded your flesh, that was the day I lost the strength to keep looking past what I had been ignoring in order to love Lucius like I used to. I tried, but I can't ignore - that," she said, grabbing his arm where she knew the Dark Mark had been made.

"Well I can ignore it, Mother," he said. "Yesterday, when he called me during my wedding. I clung to what is best in me, and I took strength from people who love me, and I ignored it."

She let go of his arm to touch his face. "And you should," she said. "You should forgive your father for what he's done to you. In time, I will too. But I will never belong to him again."

Draco was shaking his head. "So you haven't just escaped the manor. You've left him."

"He left me first," she said, her voice growing louder, choked with tears now. "He abandoned me for the Dark Lord, betrayed my promises to keep the ones he'd made to him. It's true that I knew where his allegiances lay when I married him, but I believed they would change once we were a family. They never did. I was a fool to think I could ever shift them. But I am not a fool any more."

"Excuse me, Mr. Malfoy." It was Madam Pomfrey, speaking in an uncharacteristically soft and conciliatory tone. "Your mother is injured and ought to be resting now."

He was nodding, rising, grateful for the excuse to leave.

But Narcissa clung to his hand with both of hers. "Draco, say you understand," she wailed. "Don't go until you can say you forgive me and you don't hate me."

"I don't hate you," he snapped. "But I can't stay here either."

He extricated his hand, her flesh burning against his as he dragged himself free. He was taking Hermione by the arm to lead her out. Behind them, Narcissa had begun to sob into her pillow.

Again, the doors of the hospital wing opened for them. Coming from the other direction, as if drawn by magic to Narcissa Malfoy's distress, was Professor Snape, so intent on reaching her he hardly noticed he was passing by them until Draco stepped directly, deliberately into his path. He grabbed the front of Snape's robes with both his hands, pulling him forward before ramming Snape's spine hard against the door jamb.

"You," Draco said through his teeth, meeting him eye to eye, as a grown man, a married man, protector of his family line.

Hermione's hand was on Draco's elbow, calling him back, pleading. "No, this isn't how to handle this, darling. Come with me. Stay with me."

He let go, and with his own wife, went home.

* * *

The members of the Order remaining at the school on Sunday afternoon met in Dumbledore's office, some of them still in fancy clothes from the wedding. The meeting hadn't started yet and Remus had been persuaded to tell everyone about following Tim Granger around the countryside, waiting for him to get in enough trouble to need a rescue.

"Extraordinary fellow, really," he was saying, slapping Tim on the shoulder. "Held his own for days. As soon as the Order starts admitting Muggle members, Tim Granger is my nominee."

Even so, it had been Professor McGonagall who had insisted the Grangers be invited to the meeting, reminding the wizards that Tim was the only person to have traveled in this vanishing cabinet since its repair.

Tonks led the meeting with the principles of cabinet travel. "Unless there's anything exceptional about it, the cabinet should allow passage for only one person at a time," she said. "Does that sound right, Dr. Granger?"

Tim shrugged. "I stepped into it upstairs and out of it in some haunted shop in London, like I took a wrong turn into a broken lift. It was dark and small, no room for a crowd, that's for certain, especially if they were all waving wands."

"Excellent," Tonks continued. "So if they come, they'll need to leave the cabinet one at a time, getting stunned by our waiting Aurors as they pop out."

"I don't see why we need to bother with any of this," George said, speaking to Fred but loudly enough for everyone to hear. "Let Peeves drop it down the stairs again and be done with it."

Molly shushed him. "We need to bother with it because it's our best chance to make an attack on You-know-who now that he's weakened by his attachment to Harry and the young Malfoys. We had been planning on raiding the Manor, all the youngsters in tow, but we stand to lose much less if we lure them into our stronghold instead of meeting them in theirs."

"Well said, my dear, well said," Arthur finished.

"What still worries me," Molly went on, "is what our Aurors will do if they find themselves dealing not with rank and file Death Eaters but with You-know-who himself, coming through the cabinet into Hogwarts, bold as you please."

"Yes, yes," Arthur said. "It's one thing to pick off bloody Amycus Carrow or Nott and Crabbe, but what might we be dealing with if they open the invasion with some flash - sending out the big man?"

Dumbledore hummed. "If Tom Riddle were to come himself, and emerge with a blast of magic powerful enough to incapacitate the authorities waiting to apprehend him, he would almost certainly destroy the cabinet with such force, cutting off his own escape. Useful as it is, this cabinet in particular is not well-made and the repair is of dubious quality, Dr. Granger's success notwithstanding. Draco himself tells me it was never properly finished."

"You-know-who won't risk himself that way, will he?" Remus asked. "Where is Snape? What does he think?"

"Professor Snape is indisposed," Ann said. "Family situation in the hospital wing."

The twins gaped at each other. "Family? Who in their right mind would have Snape into their family?" George asked Fred.

"That's just it," Fred said. "Think of someone not in their right mind - "

"Right, away with you two," Molly said. "You're not ready. Out."

"Mum - no, listen here," George was saying. "You don't need Snape to read You-know-who's mind. In an operation like this one, they won't send out the most fearsome fighter first. There are other ways to overpower the Aurors."

"Exactly." Fred took it up. " They'll try'n disarm our defenses with a clown instead, their very worst fighter. And once our guard is down - wham!"

Tonks understood. "Suicide assailant," she said. "You're right, boys. That's what they'll do. If they can't risk sending their most valuable wizard, they'll use the advantages of their least powerful one instead. Send him ahead packing some devastating spell or object that will take our Aurors by surprise - hiding great harm where we'd expect very little. But it will blast the wizard who brings it too. And then the rest will follow once our defenses are eliminated."

The room was humming with agreement, everyone nodding gravely.

"Hate to think who their worst one would be," Fred said to George.

"Would have been little Draco, but now he's here with us," George answered. "Who does that leave them?"

Remus sighed, swearing under his breath. "Peter. It leaves Peter Pettigrew. It's obvious. He doesn't even have a wand right now."

"Tim's rat man?" Ann asked.

"The very one," Remus nodded. "He's already given up first a finger, then an entire hand to this uprising, not to mention his soul. They might have to fool and flatter him with a load of false promises, but he'll do it."

McGonagall cleared her throat. "If it is Peter Pettigrew, with his long, fond history with the school, then surely there is something here that could move him to desist in plans to destroy it?"

"There's Remus," Tonks said quickly. "Last of the Marauders, you and Pettigrew."

He sighed again. "He is lost to me. Our friendship was once his greatest strength. But that was an awfully long time ago. Now, he is Wormtail, and we'd do better to consider his weaknesses than his strengths."

"If I may," Tim began, "He's got a weakness for smells. Couldn't get enough of sniffing at old socks. And I think he rather likes getting tackled. Just kind of lies there."

"See, he's lonely for human contact," Tonks said. "Peter is lonely. Remus - "

"No, he's chosen that," Remus said.

"Then he can un-choose it," she insisted. "Offer him your forgiveness. Amends, nostalgia, and all that. He'll come 'round."

Remus scoffed. "What are you saying, Dora? Peter comes through the cabinet and I greet him like a prodigal, with open arms and fond boyhood memories and he suddenly decides to spare us all?"

"Why not? It wouldn't even be an act. It would be sincere."

He laughed at her a second time. "Yes, it would be. It wasn't always true but now - I would like to forgive Peter now." His head sunk into his hands, his fingers scrubbing his greying hair. "But my feelings mean nothing to him. Dear girl, you grossly overestimate my charms."

Tonks blushed, making no further argument.

* * *

Away from the smashed window of the drawing room, the Death Eaters met around the gleaming wood table in the dining room of Malfoy Manor. The room was full but silent. The Dark Lord sat at the head of the long table, still angry at Snape - angry that he had left him for the mad witch, and angry that these conferences were so much harder to manage without him.

"The cabinet is as yet untested, my Lord," Yaxley was telling him. "Old Borgin himself refuses to use it."

"There is no more time for testing," Bellatrix argued. "If Severus went slithering back to his hole in the bottom of Hogwarts, then the headmaster will know by now of the cabinet's existence."

"Meaning," Amycus Carrow took over, "that the cabinet in Hogwarts will be either destroyed, or heavily guarded. Even if they survive the passage, whoever we send to begin the invasion will be hewn down."

"Yes," said the Dark Lord, "they will arrive as a dead person walking, so they may as well walk in with a blast - clear the room for the rest of us. I do appreciate a noble sacrifice, but the more damage it does, the better. Now, whom shall I send?"

The room went quieter than ever. Even Bellatrix, who usually hopped forward to take on the most mad of assignments shrunk into her chair, as if to disappear.

Yaxley sighed. "Whoever it is, we can't explain it to them as a suicide mission. They have to believe they will come back and come back to a great reward."

"Yes," the Dark Lord said. "I could always invoke your vows, call in the loyalty I am owed, manipulate through your marks, even an Imperius curse. Or I could send someone not at this table - a willing fool."

Along the length of the dining table, the Death Eaters regarded each other. Two of their ranks were in the house, but not at the table. Upstairs, Peter Pettigrew was waiting on Lucius Malfoy, now that he had no wife here to help him eat, wash, dress, and recover from his incarceration.

At the thought of them, the Dark Lord grinned, his voice rumbling into laughter. He never wanted for an abundance of well-placed fools. He had two under this very roof, Pettigrew and Malfoy, one hideous, one lovely, and either would do.


	48. Chapter 48

**AN: A fluffy chapter for us. We deserve it! Keep predicting, and asking questions. I love it and it helps me think things through.**

"Well, I'm not surprised the new Mr. and Mrs. haven't joined the rest of us for breakfast," Ron said, scanning the other tables in the Great Hall. "Can you imagine, getting married Sunday and then showing up in class as if nothing happened on Monday morning?"

Pansy salted the egg on his plate and mashed it onto his toast. "And isn't it odd to think they're having a honeymoon in here with all of us," she said. "It's not safe for them to leave right now, so they're here somewhere, in our midst, having - a marriage. How are we supposed to keep from running into them? That map of yours would say where exactly they are, wouldn't it Potter?"

Still a little pale from the exertions of yesterday, Harry came shuddering into the conversation. "What? Yeah, I haven't been looking at the Map. I've been making sure not to, actually."

Ron murmured to Pansy. "The Map's little black footprints overlap when - well, it can get quite graphic, if you're into footprints."

"Depends on whose footprints," she grinned into his face, nose to nose.

"Hey-a." It was Ginny, taking a seat next to Harry. "Might want to cool it, Ron. I've been seeing members of the Order all over the school this morning and I can't be sure Mum and Dad aren't here and all."

He sat back, out of Pansy's face, smiling a small apology, settling in to eat the rest of his breakfast without any more of her doting. Ginny, on the other hand, ignored her own advice and spent most of the breakfast hour with her forehead pressed to Harry's, massaging his temples, whispering things that were making him smile and blush.

Pansy stood up from the table first. "I'm off," she said, leaving while Ron was still fussing inside his bookbag.

"Wait a bit, Pansy," he said. But when he looked up, she was still walking toward the exit, waving without turning back.

The iciness of it froze him to the spot.

When he didn't move, Ginny and Harry broke apart, watching him.

Ron sprinted through the crowd in the dining hall, smaller students leaping out of his way. He caught up with Pansy in the corridor. "You didn't wait for me," he said, openly suffering.

She stopped, finally turning to show she was suffering herself. "We're not going to the same class right now anyway. And I didn't want to make you uncomfortable in front of your parents, if they're still here. So I'm off."

"What? No." He reached for her hand and though she let him take it, she left her fingers closed in a loose fist inside his grasp. "I would not feel uncomfortable for anyone to see us together, never."

"Oh, maybe you wouldn't if I was the Chosen One, or some such person. But as it is, I'm the daughter of blood purity sympathizer Prender Parkinson, not that there is anything I can do about it - "

"Pansy, love," he cut her off, stepping closer. "You could be the daughter of You-know-who himself and I'd still be proud to be with you. As it is, I can hardly believe you took me on. And my parents already know who your dad is and that we're together. It's not like you weren't there yesterday when I introduced you. What's this about?"

She tossed her head. "Yes, I was there. And your mother was very polite, but not at all what I'd call warm to me. Though she was so nice to everyone else. And now Ginny's telling you to cool it, and you're doing just that."

He sighed. In a few weeks, he would be seventeen - a fully grown wizard, and one who had never lived in a family where there was anything less than a mature, strong marriage functioning merrily away through all kinds of adversity. Teenaged Ron Weasley might have been a complete disaster at starting a relationship, but his years in his parents' happy household had taught him much of what he needed to know about how to maintain a relationship.

He said, "Forget what Ginny said. I will too. And as for Mum, she might have been trying to help us. You know - playing it down 'cause the twins were playing it up so much. They were following me around trying to teach me contraceptive spells and everything."

Pansy bit back a small laugh.

"There was that," Ron went on, "and the fact that Mum is going through a bit of a grieving process over Hermione. She rather hoped one of us would marry her. Not necessarily me," he hurried to add. "But I've got four other single brothers, so - well, Mum was a bit melancholy. And her distaste for the Malfoys started long before Hermione got mixed up with them. Hard habit to break. It was all very strange for her, yesterday."

They were standing in the corridor, facing one another, streams of students coursing by them. Ron was holding Pansy's hand but she wouldn't look at him. "I don't want to talk about Hermione anymore. Say something, Pansy."

"I'm trying," she said, looking closer to tears than she had yet that morning.

"Right," Ron said, resolved to cool it no more. He scooped her up in his arms, carrying her down the hall toward her History of Magic classroom.

"Weasley, honestly," she said, no longer teary, pulling in her feet to keep from kicking a first year student in the head. "Ron, my knickers. Everyone can see - "

"No one can see." He craned his neck, as if to check.

She slapped at his chest. "Don't look yourself, you dirty - "

"You're covered," he said. "Trust me. I've got you. Make way!" he hollered at the slow-moving group in front of them. They scurried to let him through.

"This is a bridal carry," he said to Pansy. "Let's say a rumour leaks out that a couple of sixth year students were married in the castle yesterday. If it does, everyone had better assume right away it was you and me."

She hooked her arms around his neck and spoke into his ear. "So the contraceptive spell," she asked, "is it difficult?"

"Nah, it's not bad at all," he said.

"A-ha, so you've been practicing it," she said, poking his chest with her forefinger. "You think you've got me right where you want me then, yeah?"

Ron sputtered for only a moment before he managed to say, "What? If you mean as in, not pregnant in school, then, yes."

She covered his mouth with her hand. "Quiet Weasley, or you'll be starting a rumour of a completely different kind. And it wouldn't even be based on anything we've - done."

"Sorry," he said into her palm. She uncovered his mouth and he bobbed forward to kiss her. "My sweet Pansy, pure as anything, aren't you."

They had come to a stop outside Binns's classroom. Ron set Pansy's feet on the floor but she kept her arms around his neck. His hair was really getting long again, and she smoothed it from the crown of his head to the nape of his long, freckled neck. She rose on her toes toward his face, whispering, "My sweet Ronald, keep practicing that spell."

* * *

The Malfoys had been awake in their married students' quarters since before the sun rose on Monday morning, but by the time breakfast was being served in the Great Hall, they were still in bed. As their classmates ate, they lay side by side on their stomachs beneath their blankets, Hermione propped on her elbows sketching a simple anatomical diagram on a scrap of parchment.

"It's called a urinary tract infection," she was saying, "and if we don't stop for a little while, I'm going to fall ill with one."

Draco rolled onto his side, groaning. "I get it, but why does that have to mean going to classes?"

She dropped the diagram to the floor, turning to face him. "I like classes. And we have to get you caught up with schoolwork. You've been out so much already this term, and if we're not killed by You-know-who, we'll still have to write our N.E.W.T.s..."

"You are right, of course, darling," he said, pushing her hair behind her ear. "But isn't there any middle ground between staying in bed all day shagging until we make you sick, and getting dressed in our uniforms and making everyone else supremely uncomfortable by turning up to classes during our honeymoon?"

"No one knows we're on our honeymoon," she argued. There was enough light in the room now for her to check on the progress of the mark she'd left on his throat the day before. It had gone from red to purple and would need some of her bruise ointment before they went anywhere. "All the guests have been discreet about the wedding. So this is still a secret marriage."

He looked past her, into the white winter sky visible through their window. "Is it still a secret to him - to the Dark Lord? And if he knows, will he ever imagine it has anything to do with him?"

She clamped her arms around her husband, clinging to him in their bed, kissing his chest. "It has nothing to do with him, not for long."

His fingers tilted her face toward his as he shimmied down the bed to bring himself close enough to kiss her mouth. She was answering with that purr in her throat as he kissed her, her foot snaking around his leg, caressing the back of his knee -

"It's called a urinary tract infection," Draco said, tearing his mouth away from her.

She laughed against his cheek. "More pestilence in the pillow talk, please."

He cleared his throat. "So that's it. For the sake of your continued good health, we'll get up and go to class. And since we have a secret marriage, for now, we'll only be making our teachers and your closest friends uncomfortable by flaunting ourselves in front of them."

Forgetting it was a mannerism of his mother's, she rebuked him with a light tap on the tip of his nose. "There will be no flaunting," she said. "And everyone who knows about us is mature enough to behave themselves - "

He scoffed. "Even Weasley?"

"Of course. And as for everyone else - "

He interrupted again. "They will have known something was up as soon as they saw we weren't in our lonely little beds in our dorms this morning. I can just imagine Patil and Brown screeching at the sight of your untouched bed. And on my end, it'll be so obvious I stayed out all night even Crabbe and Goyle will have noticed. Nott and Zabini are going to let me have it as soon as they walk into potions this morning and find me miraculously reappeared but sitting at the same table as you."

She was smirking at him, teasing. He was the only person she ever really teased. "You know, Draco, we don't have to sit together in class just because we sleep together out of it."

He was smirking back at her, his arms around her waist, pulling her closer, their skin in contact again, his heart rate rising. "We don't have to sit together, but I'd like to see anyone try to stop me."

She held his face between her hands, sighing theatrically. "Fine, I'll sit with you. In every class, all day. Except for ancient runes."

"Unacceptable," he said, falling on her neck and devouring it.

She squealed. "Draco, you're not even taking ancient runes."

"I'm coming with you anyway. Save me the best seat in the class."

* * *

"We've got to do better at scheduling some time for eating," Hermione said, famished and laying her head on the table in the potions lab.

Draco offered her the apple he'd just bitten into, balanced elegantly in the tips of his fingers.

She sat back, glancing over both her shoulders, looking furtively about the room as their classmates came in, finding their seats. She glared at him as if he'd been leaning in to snog her in front of everyone. "Keep that to yourself," she said.

"Why? Eat it," he ordered, his stool scraping across the stone floor as he moved it closer to hers. "What are you playing at, Granger? Take a bite?" He brushed the sweet, bitten edge of the apple against her lip.

Behind them, Nott and Zabini, Draco's roommates and usual potions partners, were indeed smirking at him, their eyebrows raised high as he sat ignoring them in favour of continuing to flirt with the girlfriend he had obviously just taken to the next level. They would catch him in the supply cupboard and demand details once class was underway.

But it was Ron Weasley who was making a show of the Malfoys, stopping to call them out from the doorway.

"Oi!" he said, coming into the room with Harry scuffing along behind him. "What are the pair of you doing out of seclusion, sat here feeding each other fruit? It's indecent."

Harry punched him in the arm, the universal sign for pleading with a mate to just act normal, for stars' sake.

Slughorn was coming in through the side door, calling for quiet and ordering the class to their seats. He lifted his head to survey the room - advanced potions, his favourite - and noticed the newlyweds sitting beside each other in his laboratory for the first time. After spending the year making sure to distance himself from Draco Malfoy, Slughorn was seeing him differently this morning. There was something about a man fending off a call through a Dark Mark and then hopping right up to successfully cast a Mitrian matrimonial charm that tended to boost his social capital.

It was in awe of all Draco's stellar accomplishments, in spite of his criminal father, that Slughorn forgot himself and said. "Well! If it isn't Mr. Malfoy and Miss Granger, back in class already. Good for the both of you. Best to be practical rather than sentimental about these things. Yes. Oh, but Miss Granger isn't your name any longer, is it?"

Hermione was stammering. Why did everyone keep making such a big deal of what everyone was supposed to be calling each other now? "Sir, Miss Granger will do. You needn't - "

"No, not at all," Slughorn laughed. "It will not do. Not after that truly exceptional showing of matrimonial magic yesterday. It was superb, Mrs. Malfoy - unprecedented in Hogwarts history, I believe. And to think I was honoured at the event as a guest." He seemed to be addressing the class now. "Shame you all had to miss it. Everyone but Mr. Potter, that is."

Ron groaned into his hands.

The sound of disapproval jarred Slughorn out of his happy, boastful memories. His smile faded with a little cough. "Yes, well congratulations to you both. Now, Skele-Gro is a name brand for a healing draught any potions master can brew in its generic form. If you'll turn with me to page two-twenty-eight…"

The Malfoys sat quietly at the potions table with Ron and Harry, eyes focused on page two-twenty-eight, the half-eaten apple standing between them, browning on its edges. When Slughorn set them to mixing their potions, Hermione stood up first.

"Stay here, I'll bring yours back," she said, darting off before he could object.

It was not an act of domestic service. Draco knew that. It was an attempt to keep him from being accosted and questioned by his roommates in the scuffle at the supply closet. But she left too fast and was gone too long, too choosy in finding the best alabaster stones, leaving Draco alone and unguarded when Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott came strolling from their table.

Theo was already laughing, quoting from Slughorn's ramblings. "Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy? Matrimonial magic?"

"What is Slughorn playing at?" Blaise asked. "Taking the mick for you staying out all night with Granger? One sexy old Slytherin to another?"

Theo was still laughing. "Doesn't seem like his style but, what the hell else is he talking about?"

Draco sighed and ran his hands through his hair before dropping them on the table in front of himself. He had moved his signet to his left hand but he should really get a proper wedding ring. It might be helpful when he said things like, "I married Granger yesterday."

The lads laughed again.

"You can laugh, but it's true," he said. "Check our room after class. All of my things are gone. Dumbledore gave Hermione and me a dorm of our own upstairs, and I won't be coming back to live in the dungeon. But as you can see, I haven't left school."

Theo laid a hand on his shoulder. "Look, mate, I know it's tempting to agree to whatever you have to in order to get a girl to - well, and everyone knows you've been dating the long-molared Mudblood but - "

"You will never say that again." Draco wasn't yelling, wasn't violent, but his voice was unequivocal all the same, his shoulder twitching free of Nott's grip.

Hermione came back, looking over her shoulder toward the supply closet and its low-level din of giggling and whispering, her face red with a deep blush.

Draco whisked the potion materials out of her hands, pulling her close and feeling her forehead with his cheek. "Are you all right, darling?" he was saying, ignoring Blaise and Theo standing stunned at his side. "Are you feverish? Is it the urinary tract infection already?"

"Draco, hush," she said, her face growing redder, glancing mortified at the other Slytherin boys. "I'm fine. No, there was just a lot of very pointed 'excuse me Mrs. Malfoy' in the supplies closet just now. It was a bit much."

"Excuse me," Blaise pressed, pointedly not addressing Hermione as anything, certainly not as Mrs. Malfoy. "You're saying it was a bit much, but not saying it was complete bollocks?"

Draco moved to put himself between his wife and the childhood, childish friends he couldn't trust to treat her well, but she was pushing past him. "It's the truth," she said. "I'm seventeen years old, a grown witch, and I married Draco yesterday. To avoid confusion in class, you may keep calling me Granger if you like, but I am Mrs. Malfoy."

Ron was returning to his place at the table as she said it. "I will never get used to that."

Draco raised an eyebrow at his gobsmacked friends. His voice was low and serious as he said, "Things are changing, lads. Get your loyalties and your loved ones sorted. There's no time to wait. In fact, Nott, you might want to get in touch with someone at home. I have reason to believe there may be news about your father."

Theo's face blanched.

Draco leaned closer. "Listen. No matter what they tell you, they're not as strong as they claim."

* * *

By the end of the session, the potions lab reeked of amateur-brewed generic Skele-Gro, which tastes and smells even worse than the name brand variety. The advanced potions students practically exploded through the doors of the lab, desperate to escape the fumes when Professor Slughorn dismissed them.

"Leave the doors open as you go, for stars' sake!" he called out after them.

In the corridor, Hermione fanned her hair. "The stench has sunk right down to the roots, hasn't it?" she asked Draco.

He sniffed her hair, and for the first time ever, it made him frown.

She swore lightly under her breath. "I don't suppose we have time to go up and shower before Arithmancy."

Draco curved an arm around her waist, whispering something in her ear.

She slapped at his chest. "Draco Malfoy, that will not save us any time in the long run, and you know it. But I do think we might have time to air ourselves outside for a moment in the fresh air."

With the rest of their class, who were all thinking the same thing, they dispersed outside, stepping onto the grounds, and around a corner. And before Draco could think to do it himself, Hermione had pushed his back against the wall of the castle and was snogging him. His hands had missed her terribly during potions, and they grabbed at her almost frantically, intent on touching all of her at once. It was fresh but also cold outdoors, and he had pulled her inside his robes with him.

She leaned away to speak, as if this sudden intensity between them required an explanation. "This is not just my general passion for you," she said. "This is also my admiration for what you told Nott and Zabini just now."

He left off kissing her, trying to remember what he'd said beyond confirming that he was married.

"About the Death Eaters," she prompted him. "About them not being as strong as they claim. Not that long ago, you didn't believe it. You were full of excuses about why everything we did to resist them was hopeless - maybe beautiful, but still hopeless. But you're not like that anymore. I heard you. You're starting to truly believe in what we've been doing all this time."

He nodded against her forehead. "How could I not believe after yesterday?" he asked, kissing her again, less passionately but more reverently, more like it had been at their wedding.

When they broke apart she was shaking her head. "It wasn't just yesterday. You've been coming 'round to this for months, beginning with when you risked death and torture to refuse to tell You-know-who my name so he couldn't destroy our charm. That was before Christmas."

Draco smiled but sighed, slumping slightly against the stonework. "I couldn't have resisted him without help. Well, I could have tried, but he would have killed me."

He meant it to sound flippant but she cringed against him anyway. He held her closer, adoring and warming her, not realizing he had stepped into her trap.

She straightened up to look him in the face. "Who helped you resist him, Draco? It wasn't me or the Order. We weren't there in the manor with you at Christmas. We had no idea what you were suffering."

Like a skilled barrister, she had forced him to a confession. There was no escape. The answer was too simple. He blew out a breath. "Snape. You know it was Snape. He came up with the idea of how to save me, and then to hide me. He was punished for it too."

"You there!" someone was shouting at them from the entrance. "Separate yourselves immediately!"

Professor McGonagall was marching toward them as they straightened their robes and smoothed Hermione's hair. "Ten points from Slytherin and ten - " she stopped when she was near enough to see beyond their house colours, to their faces. "Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy. You are excused for now, but do show greater propriety in the future. Hogwarts is, first and foremost, a school for under-aged, impressionable youths."

In a rush to apologize, they were speaking over each other. Of course, Professor. Still getting used to it, Professor. We'll be more careful, Professor.

"Yes, well," she said, "I am doubly glad I've found you. You have an invitation to a private lunch today, with the Grangers, in the hospital wing."

Hermione gasped. "Hospital wing? Are they alright?" She was used to thinking the worst and the school can be hazardous for wizards, let alone Muggles.

"They are quite well," McGonagall assured her. "The setting of the hospital wing was chosen to accommodate your parents' other guest, the other Madam Malfoy."


	49. Chapter 49

**AN: Getting close to the end but not quite yet. Enjoy, and never forget DDD promises you HEA.**

One thousand years after Hogwarts castle was established, the Room of Hidden Things was badly in need of a purge. That was not what headmaster Albus Dumbledore intended to do, but it was a consequence of the "tidying" he and the Order of the Phoenix undertook to clear a space around Draco Malfoy's vanishing cabinet, creating an uncluttered, open area, like a battle arena.

While Dumbledore hated to order it, whatever objects they touched which were clearly broken or ruined or rubbish to begin with - the empty liquor bottles, chipped dishes, centuries' old cheat notes, accidentally mummified animal hides - were vanished away. The rest was piled into a single mass without the maze-like paths that once snaked through the room, providing places to run and hide. There would be no chasing here, no surprises but what the Death Eaters might bring with them.

By noon on Monday, the clearing of the room was finished, and the vanishing cabinet stood uncovered, bolted shut by the headmaster's seal, in its own space against the outer wall.

Professor Dumbledore and Nymphadora Tonks stood on a section of the floor that hadn't been touched by human footprints for hundreds of years. Dumbledore stared at the door of the cabinet while Tonks stared at him.

"You are wondering, Dora, what we are to do next, when we do not know when or with whom they will strike," he said.

"Shall I get Remus, and camp out here with him and my Aurors, waiting, and hoping it's Pettigrew?" she volunteered.

He hummed. "I have misgivings about Pettigrew. Tom Riddle is a vain man. Sending Pettigrew on this errand may be the wisest course he could take but it would do nothing to satisfy Tom's sense of flare and beauty." He paced toward the door of the cabinet, Tonks following. "And even if our guess about Peter being their messenger of death is accurate, we place too great a burden on Remus if we expect him to negotiate a peaceful resolution through appeals to old feelings alone. It is an unkind and unsafe risk."

Tonks nodded, relieved. She spoke eagerly. "You're suggesting we plan for something more along the lines of conventional combat? A big fight?"

He said nothing, considering, pacing.

"Frankly, sir, it's doing my head in," Tonks admitted. "Sitting up here waiting for them to come at us, when the Malfoys' charm is ready, when Harry is ready - "

Dumbledore chuckled. "Harry benefits from the rest and comfort he is taking this morning,"

"To be sure, sir," she agreed. "But I can't help but feel like this moment of power is slipping away from us, and we ought to - "

Dumbledore stopped pacing, turning to face her, his expression that of a teacher pleased with his student for talking herself 'round to the right answer.

Tonks continued, "I feel like we need to draw the Death Eaters out - bring them here in a moment of our choosing, with all the players we need assembled and organized - everyone we could possibly need. It seems smarter than waiting and scrambling to face a counter-attack."

He nodded. "Draw them out. Yes. This open space feels desolate, doesn't it, Dora? You know what would brighten it up? A picnic. Yes, we'll take a moment to gather the Order and meet here for a bit of a lunch meeting. A picnic - that ought to sort everything out."

* * *

On Mondays, Defense Against the Dark Arts classes ran during every period of the day except for the one right before lunch. That was when Professor Snape locked his classroom and crept, stealthy as a shadow, to the hospital wing where Narcissa Malfoy had spent the night. Sleep had come too slowly for her, her back aching with its injuries from the blast of the Dark Lord's curse, her heart mourning the family she had with Lucius, the one she had to let slip away.

Snape had stayed with her until she fell asleep, and as he made his way back to her now, he replayed last night's conversations in his mind.

After Draco had stormed out, it had taken her hours to stop crying completely, and she had done it without Snape being able to hold her for comfort. In the school where he worked, where his character needed to be above reproach, he would hardly touch her, the still-married mother of a student.

The distance between them helped him find the resolve to sit at her bedside, late in the night, and to say, "You are free of your captors now, Cissa. In this castle, you are under the protection of Albus Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix."

"Yes, Severus. Thanks to you," she said, sighing into her pillows, managing after all her tears to smile up at him from where she lay.

His head drooped for a moment before he drew in a great breath, forcing his shoulders to square. "A great many things have passed between you and I, as we fought toward your safety. Declarations were made, intentions spoken - "

Her eyes widened, lips parting, her smile gone.

He saw it but went on. "I wish you to understand that I will not hold you to anything you might have said under such extraordinary duress."

Her voice was small, barely a breath. "Severus - "

"Now that you are safe and free, Narcissa, you have no more need of my protection. And should you wish to plan a future for yourself independent of me," he paused, swallowing hard, "I would suffer, but I would come to understand."

She moved as if to sit up but the pain in her back gripped her and she sank into the mattress.

His eyes were clenched closed, and he pressed ahead saying, "Or, if you choose to wait for better days, biding your time to make a return to your husband of nearly twenty years with whom you share a heartbroken child, I would understand that as well. Lucius is deceived and angry now, but I do not doubt that if he survives this ordeal, he will forgive you. Divorce is an ugly, Muggle-derived institution, after all."

She was angry enough to interrupt him with a scoff. "You think I'm a fool," she said. "You mistake me for a woman who can only move by advancing from one man to another."

"Narcissa, no," he said, eyes open again. "If I truly believed that, I would happily, eagerly make myself the next man in your life. If only I could keep you with me merely by stepping forward. If only things were that simple. But they are not."

She pounded one fist against the bed. "All you asked of me was love, Severus," she said. "You did not ask for any lengthy justifications of why. You want them now?"

He scrubbed his face with his hands. Perhaps he did, though he hated himself for it. Instead of asking, he said, "I remember you, Cissa, in school, always reading, the beautiful girl in the library, yawning through her fancy older boyfriend's rants on quidditch and his unsophisticated political theories based on bloodlines. You were brilliant. You are brilliant. And as the days pass and your strength and the clarity of your mind returns, you may choose to go back to where that girl left off, returning to the House of Black to use your family's hitherto misguided power to challenge those who once oppressed you - "

"Severus, you're not letting me - "

"There is family to support you, Cissa. There is Draco, fully grown now, and with a powerful young wife. There has always been Andromeda and her husband and daughter. The Prewett family survives in Molly Weasley and her children. It would be an odd alliance, but viable. And all of this says nothing of Sirius Black's godson, the storied Harry Potter himself." He sneered through the last one. "Should you remain separate from Lucius, there is no need for you to ever be alone in this conflict - in this world."

"Severus, stop," she said with a desperate air of finality. She had dropped her hand over his where it lay on her bedsheet. "Can't you see that I adore you? You are selfless and brave and - and I remember the angry boy sitting in the library behind a fortress of books on potions and the dark arts. We were there together. I never yawned at you. I never laughed at you unless you wanted me to. I won't say that I loved you then, but I did imagine what it would be like to find you watching me with the softness in your eyes you reserved only for Lily Evans - the softness with which you are looking at me tonight."

He choked, his hand twitching beneath hers.

"Severus, don't turn away. Look at me. I can't bear for you to stop."

Her hand tightened over his, a single pulse before withdrawing, her arm folding over her stomach. "However, I do understand that I come to you as a heavy burden. I am a mother, and now both my child and I are traitors to the Dark Lord. I have a fortune, but no home. I have a disgraced, jilted husband who may not demand revenge but who may connive for it. And then there is this," she tugged at her collar, where the traces of sectumsempra still showed red and ragged. "The pretty young girl in the library is now cursed and scarred."

He took her hand away from her collar. "Cissa, don't - "

She pulled her hands free of his. "You have already been noble, Severus. But if you can't come any further toward me and have a mind to let me go," she paused to take in a breath so deep he heard her voice in it, like a sob, "I will - I will beg you to stay all the same."

He sprung forward to sit on the edge of her bed. It was late enough that the hospital wing was empty, though he might have risked coming this close to her at this moment even in a crowd. He bent over Narcissa where she lay unable to rise. He was not touching her at any point, his hands on either side of her head, his face hovering over hers. "You are no burden."

"I am," she said, taking his face in her hands. "But Madam Malfoy has not learned to be selfless, as you have. Stay, Severus. Please."

He leaned into her right palm, his mouth closed but pressed to her skin, nodding.

"Let's not talk like this again," she said, smoothing his hair as it fell to hide his face from her. "Come to me tomorrow without any tragedy. Come and tell me about your day, about your classes, like you used to when we were here as students. Bring me vapid gossip, what the students are saying about my son's marriage. Bring me parchment so I can write to our solicitor in London about my separation and begin to move forward. Bring me flowers for this room - anything but more of this tortured struggle to believe I can love you."

This was the spirit in which he meant to approach her this morning, not brooding and heroic, but as someone she could have in her life from day to day. Students flung themselves out of the way as he moved from the classrooms to the hospital wing, a small writing desk under his arm, stocked with parchment, ink and quills, and hidden out of sight inside his robes, he carried a stalk of deep purple flowers, aconite kept in bloom all year long in the greenhouses.

Narcissa beamed at him as he conjured a silver vase for the flowers and set them beside her. "Wolfsbane," she said, using one of the flower's folksier names. "For the past nineteen years I have ordered fresh flowers for my table every day, and I must say this is the first time anyone has ever sent me Wolfsbane. How perfectly Snape of you."

He raised an eyebrow. "Do you like it, or not?"

She laughed. "From anyone else, I might think they were trying to kill me. But from you, Severus, it is a lovely show of your deep concern for me. I'm sure anyone happening by would understand if I thanked you for it with a small, chaste kiss on the cheek."

He raised both eyebrows, but his voice kept its monotone. "I am sure they would not."

Her mouth was curving into that somewhat wicked smile of hers. "Suit yourself, Severus, but do come here and help me. It wouldn't do for my letter to my solicitor to be written in your hand. And so you must sit me up to write it myself."

He startled. "You are able to sit up this morning?"

"If you help me, yes," she said, both her arms extended toward him. A pink colour was rising in his face as he hesitated. She waved her hands, beckoning. "As my erstwhile healer, Severus, please help me up."

He bent over her, letting her hold him around the neck, propping her up, shifting her toward the head of the bed. "See, I'm sitting," she smiled.

"So you are." He was nodding, indulging in a small smile himself. "A truly marvelous sight, Narcissa. Narcissa? You may let go of me now."

"In a moment, Severus, let me steady myself," she said, pulling at his neck again, turning her face toward it. "You smell like - like peat moss."

"From the greenhouses," he muttered, her chest rising against him as she inhaled.

"It's better than roses," she said, "complex and lush - "

"For stars' sake, Cissa," he whispered into her ear, his cheek hot against hers, "unhand me and write to your solicitor."

"Cissa!" someone was calling from the door.

Snape stood up, sliding out of Narcissa's grip as she greeted Ann Granger. He withdrew, excusing himself.

"You needn't rush off on my account," Ann called after him as he backed out of the room.

"Not at all, Dr. Granger. I've a meeting with Professor Dumbledore and must be leaving." He bowed and was gone.

* * *

"I don't want to have lunch with anyone else," Draco said, draped over his wife's shoulders like a cape as they walked out of Arithmancy class to meet their parents in the hospital wing. "I'd rather go upstairs…"

"Other appetites are important too. You can't give up eating just because you found something you like better," Hermione laughed over her shoulder, against his face. "And it might be for the best that we stay out of the Great Hall and give everyone a chance to talk about us without having to sit there in the thick of it ourselves while they do it."

"Upstairs…" he droned into her ear.

Draco was focused solely on her, but Hermione was glancing around them, getting a sense of the people rushing past in the corridor, nodding primly at anyone who dared or chanced to make eye contact. If they had any guesses about what Draco was whispering to her, they were probably right. Her primness battled her smirk. "We will go upstairs soon. After lunch and two more classes."

He let out a huge sigh. "It's already been four hours."

"I snogged you during the break."

He was nearly devouring her ear. "That just makes it worse."

"Alright, since it's still our honeymoon, we can skip Charms," she laughed, ducking away from him. "But not Herbology."

"Yes," he said, standing obediently still as she turned to face him, smoothing his hair and clothes, checking the progress of the bruise all but healed on his neck.

"How's my hair?" she asked him in return.

He fluffed it hopelessly. "You look darling."

She looked up at him, plaintively. "Help me, Malfoy. You know your mother is terrifying, don't you? And it's got nothing to do with Death Eaters." She pawed through her bag for a mirror. "We are about to find her looking flawless and stately as a queen in spite of being in a hospital bed the day after getting cursed by You-know-who."

Draco smirked. "That's my mother. Though hanging out with Snape is bound to take some of the shine off her."

It was another remark meant to be flippant but landing with a dark sadness to it - his specialty. She sighed and held his face between her hands. "Will you be alright if he's there when we go in?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I am glad we don't have DADA until tomorrow. I will say that."

She rose onto her toes to kiss him. "It's alright for you to be sad for your mother. Don't hide that from her. Anger, however, is different. We must be kind to her."

He nodded against her face. "I'll try."

"Yes, try your best. She's your mother."

He sighed again. "Right - parents, family, unconditional love, all of that. It's harder than it sounds. Think of it this way: imagine if it was my father lying in there instead of her. My father the Death Eater who gave his comrades permission to kill you and your best friends. Imagine that and then remember that I've always loved him just as much as I love her. I still do. But imagine me showing kindness toward him. It's not easy."

She held him tightly around his neck. "I never said not to protect yourself, Draco. If they're hurting you, protect yourself. Draw a boundary as wide as the whole country if you need to. But don't be unkind."

Hand in hand they came into the hospital wing. Behind a curtain, the Grangers and Narcissa Malfoy were already seated together at Narcissa's bed, talking.

Draco heard his mother's voice saying, "It was always a good library but it became truly astounding when merged with what I brought with me from my own house. Yes, I had a dowery of books on top of a dowery of galleons. Might have been the more valuable portion as well."

Ann was laughing. "A dowry? Cissa, did you just use the word 'dowry' here on the brink of the twenty-first century?"

"First things first, is it Mother?" Draco said, shouldering through the curtain and into the conversation, sauntering toward her cot with his hands in his pockets, Hermione's hand tucked into the crook of his arm. "Already launching into negotiations with father on divvying up the Malfoy library?" He glanced at the writing desk in her lap. "Oh, and dividing it up in writing, through the solicitors in London. Most civil of you."

Narcissa folded her hands on the writing desk, smiling up at her son with a stirring bittersweetness. "Not at all, Draco."

"Good," he clipped. "Because you'd better leave it alone. It's neither the Malfoy library nor the Black library any longer. It's the Granger's library. It's the belated bride price I'm offering for their daughter. The whole collection, undivided."

Ann and Tim Granger chuckled to each other.

"Goodness gracious, Draco, where would we keep it in a London house?" Ann said.

"Bride price, indeed," said Tim.

Narcissa's smile hadn't quavered. "Draco, I was just telling your family I had no intention of disturbing the library. In my instructions to my solicitors, I directed them to transfer the ownership of it out of my marital property and into yours and Hermione's. You will preserve and safeguard it." She shifted her gaze to Hermione. "Of that I can be sure."

"Yes, don't offer it as bride price to us," Ann said. "Accept it as a wedding gift from your parents."

Draco paused, his shoulders sagging. "Father hasn't agreed to any of this. Though he may not have to. For all we know, they may have killed him by now - "

"They have not," Narcissa said, her voice firm but not loud. "I would know. Trust your father in this, Draco. His best instincts are those of self preservation. He will survive."

"I'll see that he does." Draco swore it like an oath.

There was a moment of silence which Hermione broke with a gentle clearing of her throat. "We'll have to be back in class soon…"

"Of course," Narcissa said. She waved toward the trolley at her bedside laden with sandwiches and tea cakes. "Eat, everyone - especially you, Draco. I'd reckon you haven't taken anything all day."

"Oh, he ate most of an apple," Hermione rushed to say.

Narcissa laughed. "I should have known. Come, Draco, you're not feeling hungry but that doesn't mean you aren't." She smiled at Hermione. "It's a weakness of his, forgetting to eat when he's upset. But of course, you already know."

The rest of lunch was light conversation piloted by the Grangers, long time dentists each highly skilled in managing lopsided chatting in uncomfortable, even acutely painful situations. Draco managed to speak to them, interacting with his mother only indirectly, through his wife and in-laws, as if they were interpreters.

He would only eat when Hermione waited until he was distracted and slipped bits of sandwiches and cakes into his mouth.

"Thank you, darling, no more," he said after swallowing each bite.

She kept feeding him anyway, already knowing how she would make it up to him. They would be skipping Herbology after all.

* * *

Ron and Harry left Charms class early when Pigwidgeon came blustering in with an urgent message from the headmaster calling them to the Room of Hidden Things.

They arrived to find the room starkly different than Harry had ever seen it, all neat and wrong, as if prepared for something awful to happen. Members of the Order of the Phoenix who weren't teaching classes at the moment were gathered there: Tonks and Remus, Kingsley Shacklebolt, the Weasley twins complete with both of their parents. A pair of Aurors stood guarding the cabinet. The picnic meeting with Dumbledore was over and the Order was ready to discuss their plan.

Hermione was there as well, waiting with Malfoy who had a tousled, rosy look about him that still made Harry want to hit him somehow.

Dumbledore turned slowly at the sound of the door closing behind the boys. His face took on a grave solemnity Harry recognized from other times Dumbledore had come to him to ask, as he said, for too much. This time, it truly would be to request a price Harry did not want to pay.

The headmaster was advancing toward them, one hand raised. "The time has come," he said, "when we have need of you." He was close enough now to reach out his long, blackened fingers and take Harry by the arm.

He didn't. Instead, as Molly Weasley held her head in her hands, his touch landed on Ron. "We entreat you to help us, young Mr. Weasley."


	50. Chapter 50

"We entreat you to help us, young Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said, taking Ron's arm as the Order of the Phoenix and Ron's best friends looked on. He was nudging Ron's sleeve upward to inspect the scars left behind by the tentacled brains in the Department of Mysteries the year before. Almost cringing already, Ron waited for the headmaster to read them as a statement of the quality of Ron's heroism, but Dumbledore had a way of not saying what was expected.

"In your first year with us," he began instead, "you played - now, how did I celebrate it at the time - the best game of wizard's chess Hogwarts had seen in many years."

Ron glanced around the room, looking for the wind-up. His mother was holding his father's handkerchief against her face, dabbing her eyes. The twins stood with their arms folded, leaning toward one another with less hilarity than usual. Maybe that was just them grown up. Tonks stood beside Remus, bouncing on the balls of her feet, nodding as if it would help Ron and Dumbledore get on with it. She was the complete opposite of Kingsley Shacklebolt's calm admiration of the headmaster. Malfoy couldn't seem to lift his head in the presence of the cabinet he'd brought into the room months earlier. And Harry and Hermione looked on with big eyes and slightly open mouths - expressions identical to Ron's own.

Ron gave his slow reply. "If you say so, sir."

"Fiery boldness and cool cleverness are rare enough qualities. Possessing both and holding them in balance is rarer still," Dumbledore went on. "But the task we require at this time calls for both. It calls for you, Ron Weasley."

Ron found his father's face to ask him as best he could without words what the flaming hell old Dumbledore was on about. Arthur understood but answered only with a grave nod.

Dumbledore began to walk in a circle around Ron, like a sheepdog separating him from Harry standing at his side. "We've been puzzling over how to best use the Malfoys' matrimonial charm and Harry's connection to Voldemort to our advantage - to disembody him for another ten years or so, something like Harry's mother did, but without the casualty. It will be difficult and delicate, and I am sorry to say that the best plan we have come up with requires the risk of one more Hogwarts student."

As Dumbledore came to stand in front of Ron again, he stopped. "We need a student to make a trip through the vanishing cabinet."

"As a - a test?" Ron stammered.

"No, we're beyond that," Dumbledore said. "The cabinet is fully operational. I have verified the repair myself. Draco's efforts were successful enough."

It was not praise and Draco did not take it as such, turning slightly more toward his wife, as if for protection. She linked her arm through his and nuzzled his shoulder.

"If we send an adult member of the Order," Dumbledore explained, "the Death Eaters will recognize the gesture for the trap it is, and they will expect that if they travel to Hogwarts through the cabinet, they will emerge into an environment just like the one you see here - a battlefield insulated from students and ringed with waiting, drawn wands."

He waved his hand at the assembled adults.

"If we send a student, however," he continued, "there is deniability. A student with no apparation license may indeed have discovered and be using the cabinet solely for easy transportation to London."

Ron frowned. "Dangerous dark magic for skiving off."

Dumbledore chuckled, turning to Fred and George. "Misters Weasley, explain the next bit to your brother."

Fred unfolded his arms as he began. "Right, so George and I host a big spontaneous fake event at the shop on Diagon Alley - "

"But the meanies here at the school won't let anyone come, not even our adoring brother - "

"But we have a somewhat infamous history with a certain Hogwarts vanishing cabinet - "

"Or so said one snitch, once upon a time - "

"So we must have told you all about it and, là voila, there you are popping out of the cabinet in Borgin and Burkes with a plausible story about needing to get up to our shop on the sly."

"And that's how we let the cowardly Death Eaters know for certain their cabinet works safely for wizards," George finished.

Ron was nodding. "Right. So you all want me as bait to trap the Death Eaters so you can use the real magic on them? I get to London, make a break for it, up to Fred and George's, and then lay low while Death Eaters start filing through the cabinet for you to pick off here?"

Dumbledore stepped closer to him. "Mr. Weasley, in chess, if you bait a king with a pawn - offering a small piece with many restrictions who moves mostly in one direction as bait for the game's ultimate prize - will the king ever step away from safety to take him?"

Ron shrugged, cautious about being tested. "Most of the time, no. It's a bad trade, not worth it."

"So what would we do, Mr. Weasley, to make a king rise to the bait of a pawn?"

"You don't, really," Ron said. But then he blinked, a chess board appearing in his mind's eye. "What you would do is maneuvre the pawn to the end of the board, and trade it for a major piece. Then you'd chase the king out of safety and into the battlefield."

Dumbledore smiled "Very good, Mr. Weasley. Should you accept this assignment, you will be no bait, no sacrifice. You may look like a pawn at first, but you will truly be the rook forcing the king into the open."

Harry snagged Ron by the sleeve, tugging him back to his side. "We'll go together. Ron's brilliant, and he's not scared of Death Eaters, but he's never faced - "

"I'm afraid not, Harry," Dumbledore interrupted. "You are needed here, as is Miss - Mrs. Malfoy."

Draco slipped his arms around Hermione's waist to make sure she stayed anyway.

Dumbledore resumed his circular walk around Ron. "Your brothers will hold the event at their shop, and you will make an attempt to get there through the cabinet, but you will not arrive. Instead, you will be sure to be caught, and turned over to the Death Eaters."

Molly's shoulders gave silent lurch. Arthur pulled her to his side, beneath his arm.

Dumbledore went on. "If the Death Eaters have had the good sense to commit your name and face to memory, they will recall that they last encountered you in the Ministry's Brain Room under the effects of an oddly intoxicating curse. Don't be embarrassed, Mr. Weasley, it's for the best. It means they will underestimate you. They will mistake you for a pawn."

Dumbledore placed a hand on each of Ron's shoulders. "You are not a fool. But you must play one. Divulge the repair of the cabinet. Tell them as much as you need to. Encourage them to come to us. Let them know the cabinet is kept in a secluded area of the castle. Boast about knowing Harry well. Tell them he's a ego-driven fool and that I am badly injured, that Professor Snape is disordered leaving school leadership in chaos."

"Snape disordered? Well, that's fair enough," Ron mumbled.

Dumbledore clapped his hands against Ron's shoulders one more time. "Yes, tell them whatever you need to, convince them to bring Voldemort himself close enough for us to reach him in his weakened state."

Molly couldn't hold herself back anymore. "We'll be there too, Ron. Dad and I and the twins, Bill - we'll be close by you in London or wherever they take you. We won't leave you to them."

Ron frowned. "Mum, that's a whole troop. Don't be so close you expose everything. I'll be alright."

"Yes, I'll see to it," she said.

Dumbledore smiled. "I've always admired large families. They're something like a chess set, full of different, moving pieces, all of them in need of defending, aren't they Molly? No wonder the sixth born son is an expert player."

He went on, pressing Ron. "Do you accept the assignment?"

Ron looked to Harry, then to Hermione. "I have to go alone," he said.

Dumbledore nodded. "Each of your best friends has an important role in the confrontation here. I will not stop your family from watching over you, but the only wits you will have to rely on are your own, and they will do."

Ron was still looking at Ron and Hermione. Their faces were pained, tense with worry. "Do you think I can do it?" he asked them.

"I hate it," Hermione said. "But if anyone can find a way through it, you can."

Harry stood fidgeting, looking for something to express other than the sick grief he felt at the thought of Ron meeting Voldemort - alone. "Bring him to me," he said. "Voldemort, Ron, bring him to me."

* * *

Pansy was livid, her rucksack on her back, her fists banging on the frame of the Fat Lady's portrait, her face set in stony resolve as she demanded entrance to Gryffindor Tower.

"Stop, you awful thing, stop hitting me, the whole of my world is rattling to its foundations," the Fat Lady's voice shrilled down the dark corridor.

"Open up then," Pansy said. "Or tell Ronald Weasley to come out."

"Sir Cadogan!" the Fat Lady was crying. "Cadogan, send out Weasley. For stars sake, hurry. She won't quit."

When the portrait hole opened it was Ginny Weasley, not Ron, who Sir Cadogan from the portrait inside the Gryffindor common room had sent out to speak to Pansy.

"Parkinson?" she said. "Trouble in paradise yet again? Funny how you never catch Harry and I in a spat, isn't it?"

"Just let me through," was all Pansy said. "He's in there and I need to speak to him."

Ginny stepped out of the portrait hole and onto the stone floor of the corridor, the edge of the portrait still in her hand, her body blocking the way inside, a smirk tugging at her mouth. "It's getting late, Parkinson. Almost curfew. You'd better come back tomorrow."

Pansy shook her head. "No. Tonight."

Ginny edged forward, the passageway tantalizingly open behind her. "There's no Inquisitorial Squad anymore, Pansy Parkinson. You can't force your way in here. Now go."

Pansy nodded. "I am sorry about the Inquisitorial Squad. It was misguided and very wrong of me. I should have apologized ages ago. Now, if you please - "

"Fight me," Ginny smirked. Tall and athletic, she widened her stance and propped her hands on her hips, showing no signs of yielding.

Pansy sighed, sloughing off her rucksack, then her cloak. She didn't stand much of a chance against Ginny and she knew it. But she had two older sisters at home, meaning she was accustomed to such odds. "Right," Pansy said, pushing her hair out of her face with both hands. "Not much of a square go, but come on then."

Ginny laughed at her. "You're joking."

"This was your idea. I said, come on!"

"Oh, give over," Ginny said, still laughing. "Come inside, you mad creature. I'm not even sure he's here, but go up and see."

Pansy picked up her things, took a breath as if diving underwater, and slipped inside Gryffindor Tower for the first time ever.

"That one," Ginny said, pointing to the staircase to the boys' dormitory.

The stench of adolescent males and their laundry got stronger as Pansy climbed but she pushed on. Which door was it? She listened at one and heard nothing but the same three sad guitar chords. She listened at another to hear a loud argument about quidditch. That could have been the right room but when no one spoke up for the Chudley Cannons, she moved on. At the third room she tried, she could barely make out the sound of loud whispers, like a furtive argument with life-and-death stakes. Nothing said Harry Potter and Ron Weasley more than that, and she rapped on the door.

Neville Longbottom answered, gasping at the sight of a girl and reaching for something to put on over his vest.

Pansy pushed past him, storming into the boys' room. Behind his glasses, Harry's eyes were wide and panicked. "Come on, you lot," he said, leading all of his roommates but Ron down the stairs.

The floor was thick with discarded, unmatched socks which Pansy was now throwing at Ron's head. "Ronald Weasley, how dare you?" she hollered.

He crossed the floor in a single inelegant step, taking Pansy's hands to keep her from touching any more socks, shushing her.

"How dare you send me an owl announcing you're leaving on some - mission. An owl? Honestly!"

"What? Already?" Ron said, craning his neck as if to see out the window. "That bloody bird. I told him to wait until I was off."

Pansy tore her hands out of Ron's grip. "Don't you blame Pigwidgeon. He did the right thing in telling me now."

"Did he? By sending you in here to throw a strop?"

"You're leaving me," Pansy said, her chin quivering, eyes glistening.

"Pansy - Pansy, love - no - "

"Don't you 'Pansy-love' me." She fought to stay angry, protesting his use of their pet name because it worked so well.

"I wasn't leaving you," he said, trying to gather her in his arms as she twisted. "Did you read my note? I'm only going away for a few days. For Dumbledore."

She stopped struggling and threw her arms around his waist. "I know what that means," she said. "It means you're off to do something dangerous. You're off to get hurt and scarred and maybe even killed. If I hadn't found out before you left, I might have never..." She couldn't finish.

Ron swayed on the spot, holding her more tightly. "It's not - well, yes it is dangerous. But - but Pansy, I warned you about this, in the hospital wing after I was poisoned. You remember. Being part of Harry's inner circle, having a family all tied up in the Order of the Phoenix, it means things like this are a part of my life."

"Take me with you," she said in a high, quiet voice against his chest. "I'm part of your life too."

"Aw, is that why you've brought a rucksack?" he said, jostling it with one hand. "You're all packed up to leave with me and keep me safe?"

"Stop making it sound so stupid," she said.

He gave a low laugh as he slid the pack and cloak off of her back, setting them on the floor at their feet. "I can't bring you, love."

"Stop coddling me, Ron - "

"It's not me, it's Dumbledore. He's a teacher, remember? He's fussy as anything about parental permission for under-aged students. My parents have consented to let me do this but yours - can you imagine what yours would have to say about it?"

She wiped her face on his sleeve. Of course her parents would hate it. They might even make her come home for the rest of the year if she asked about it. But it was still a ridiculous technicality. "Don't hold my parents against me," she said.

"Your parents are clearly not what I am holding against you right now," he said.

She nearly laughed.

"Love, I'm sorry about the owl," Ron continued. "I thought it would be easier and I was dead wrong."

"Yes, you were."

His heart was beginning to pound out of something more than self-defense. "Maybe I was afraid that if I saw you, kissed you goodbye, I wouldn't be able to leave."

She turned her face up, slowly. "Then don't leave."

"I have to. It's decided. The whole w - " His words were cut off as she flung her arms around his neck and hopped up to clamp her legs around his waist, her mouth on his silencing whatever excuse he was about to speak.

This time, Ron didn't worry about where to put his hands. He gripped her thighs and staggered backward, moving to lean against the post of his bed. It wasn't where he expected it and he fell between the posts, Pansy crashing down on him, straddling him, breaking for the impact so they didn't smash one another's teeth but then snogging him furiously.

"Take me with you, Ron," she said as he fought for breath, as his hands moved up the outer edges of her thighs, over his hips before he dropped them onto the bed, clutching the sheets instead.

She groped for his wrists and pulled his hands back to her waist. Ron sank his fingers into her sides, finding not the knit of her jumper but the warm smoothness of her skin beneath it.

"Sweet supernovas, Pansy..."

She spoke into his mouth. "Take me with you. Please."

"This isn't even my bed. It's Harry's."

Pansy wasn't dissuaded, her hand inside the collar of his jumper, stretching it out terribly as she moved over his skin, his shoulder and the muscle in his chest.

Ron had to take control before he lost it but he wasn't sure how or, at the moment, exactly why. He rolled over, on top of her now which gave him more control but not in the way he intended. He crushed Pansy with everything he had, her hands coming out of his clothes to brace his head, working their kiss. He moaned against her. "Love, what are we doing?"

"Yeah, what ARE you doing?"

It was Harry, standing in the doorway.

Ron wrenched himself sideways, off of Pansy, sitting but not ready to stand yet.

"Honestly, your own bed is right there," Harry said, pointing.

Ron wasn't apologizing. "Yeah, well. At least she's not your sister, right?"

Harry flushed. There was another story here, some other mishap in this bedroom. "Just clear off it, would you? I'll be back in three minutes," Harry said, closing the door.

Ron turned back to Pansy, not to pick up where they left off but to trace her brow and the line of her nose with one finger. "I have to go alone," he said. "And I won't be able to write. But I'll think of you whenever I can, and I'll love you all the time."

She rolled into his side and he pulled her up to hold her against his chest again.

"Stay close to Harry while I'm gone," he said.

She frowned. "And Ginny? Not possible."

"Draco then," Ron said. "You've always liked Draco, for some reason. And he'll keep you close to Hermione and there will be real protection in that. Just don't retreat to those Slytherin gits."

She frowned. "How are we ever going to fix this without my Slytherins? Aren't you learning anything?"

"Right. Alright," Ron said, squeezing her and kissing her forehead once more before letting her go. "Thank you for coming to - to see me off. Take good care of yourself while I'm gone. I guess you'll know how."

* * *

Moonlight was the best light for Draco Malfoy. Hermione had always known it but it was never more clear than when he lay on their bed, his back bared as the moon moved past their window. The ornate window grill threw black shadows on his white skin. She sat on the mattress tracing them with her finger as he sighed into their pillows.

"I worry about the weasel," he said.

She sank onto the mattress beside him, folding her arm around his waist. "Me too."

He turned his face to her, the moonlight lighting his hair but leaving his expression hidden in shadows. "It's all down to that bloody cabinet - to the stupidest thing I've ever done."

"No," she said. "It's down to our matrimonial charm - to the most brilliant thing you've ever done." She couldn't see his face but she could still find it well enough to kiss him on the mouth. They'd been together alone in their room ever since dinner and he tasted and smelled just like her. She pushed harder against him, nudging him up off his stomach and onto his side, so the light would illuminate his profile - a literal turning of him from darkness to light.

"If I get your best friend killed, how will you still love me?" he said.

She smiled against his shoulder, ignoring his maudlin questions about a love she did not believe he doubted. "He's your friend too. You worry about him for himself, not just for me. Admit it."

He sighed into her hair. "I admit it."

She lifted her face toward his. "You liking my friends - that is actually quite," her lips were almost touching his as she spoke, "alluring."

He smiled. "Is it? Why didn't you say so? Potter and I could have been best friends by now."

She ran her finger tip along the scar on his chest. "If when we tear his and You-know-who's souls off our charm, and Harry's hate for you is anything like as strong as his hate for the Dark Lord, we will have a devastating problem."

He closed his hand over hers, pressing her palm to the scar. "We won't. Not after we've both been trying so hard, Hermione. He held me down while my Dark Mark burned. Now maybe I can do something like it in return when the Dark Lord comes for him."

She tipped her forehead against his chin. "You will, I know it."

* * *

The Dark Lord no longer held court in the dining hall at Malfoy Manor. The upright carved wooden chairs were gorgeous but he needed to recline rather than sit. He had taken the house's master bedchamber now that Madam Malfoy had quitted it. The room had been purged of its narcissus flowers and gowns and made fit for the cold darkness that suited the Dark Lord. The snake Nagini lay coiled beside him on the bed where Draco Malfoy was conceived.

His right arm, from fingertips to neck, was withered grey flesh on bone. It had been that way since the day Snape left with the Muggle and Madam Malfoy. Since then, the Dark Lord had hardly slept. It wasn't just because of the loss of Snape, though this had disordered the Dark Lord's mind even more than he had expected when he raised his wand against him.

Something else had changed - something inside of him. The young Malfoy and his witch had altered their charm somehow. This alteration must have been what had struck him down in the drawing room, what had taken his arm. How much more could they take before he was forced back into the form of an incorporeal wraith, hiding in a horcrux, hoping any of his mad or incompetent or back-stabbing servants remembered their oaths and found him? And did Young Malfoy and the witch know what they had done? The boy had refused to answer the call of the Mark, so he must know something.

He couldn't linger, waiting in Malfoy Manor any longer, especially since the building itself could not be trusted not to lash out at them. Lucius was here now but he couldn't seem to command his own house, not like a true master ought to be able to. It must have switched its allegiance to Young Master Malfoy while Lucius was away.

With his left hand, the Dark Lord stroked the cold, dry snake at his side. It rippled against him, tense like the greedy anticipation inside him made visible. The boy needed to be destroyed, which meant getting rid of the witch first. If it was a simple matter of storming Hogwarts through the cabinet it would be done by now. But the Dark Lord suspected taking the boy and the witch together might be too dangerous, especially inside Albus Dumbledore's school. One of the three elements of the equation - the boy, the witch, or the headmaster - needed to be eliminated before he would strike.

Lucius - it all came down to that beautiful idiot. If in the end he became nothing but a suicide assailant, so be it. That result was risky and unpredictable yet better than nothing. But the better plan would be for Lucius to step into the vanishing cabinet's trap and use his position as Young Malfoy's father to take him away. Ah, but then there would be love, so dangerous and ridiculous, and it would lead the witch - the Granger girl, her twisted sense of heroism well-known - to offer herself in Young Malfoy's place. And, ignoring his son's pleas Lucius would agree, and bring her to stand before the Dark Lord for the first, and the last time.


	51. Chapter 51

**AN: It's not quite over. And remember: HEA, HEA**

Borgin and Burkes couldn't have been more deserted when Ron Weasley jumped out of its resident vanishing cabinet. It was after midnight in the middle of the week, and he arrived landing heavily on both feet, slamming the door behind him. There had been a crackling snap like electricity as he broke through the protective ward meant to keep anyone in the shop from getting into the cabinet. Breaking through from the other side was easier, but it was still noisy and left his clothes smoking.

As far as Ron could tell, it hadn't raised any alarms. He waited, watching the ceiling in the near dark, listening for footsteps overhead. Nothing.

He spied a blue and white china vase, and deliberately walked into the table it was perched on hard enough to set it rocking, teetering, and then smashing onto the floor. That did it. A great round of swearing broke out upstairs, a shuffling of feet and the sound of a wand scraping against the walls as Borgin armed himself and came down the stairs. Ron made as if he was trying to undo the padlock on the front door, and this was how Borgin found him when all of the lights illuminated at once.

"What in bloody blazes are you doing in here?" Borgins said.

"Is this Diagon Alley?" Ron asked. "They said I'd come out in London, on Diagon Alley. But it doesn't look right."

"Who said? And what'd ya come out of?"

Ron glanced around the room. "That," he said brightly, pointing at the cabinet. "It goes to Hogwarts. Didn't you know?"

"Of course I know," Borgin snapped. It was then that he noticed the broken vase. He shrieked.

"Oh, sorry about that," Ron said. "Shall I mend it for you?"

"Stay back," Borgin demanded. "I'll have you for breaking and entering. That's what I'll do."

"That'd be bold of you, bringing Aurors in here. Please, sir. I meant no harm. My brothers run a shop close by, you see. They're having the shop's anniversary bash tomorrow - maybe you noticed the adverts - but our headmaster wouldn't give me leave to come, it being dark times and all. But how could stay away, with this cabinet standing by so perfectly - "

"Quiet," Borgin snapped. "I can't think at this hour and I need to get it right."

He stood aside, muttering to himself. "No Aurors in here. No, no. The cabinet - it works, properly, definitely. Got to tell the - the others. But - "

He creaked his neck around to look at Ron more closely. "Who did you say you were again?"

"Weasley. Ron Weasley, sir. My brothers run the joke shop on - "

His eyes narrowed. "Yes, yes, Weasley. That would make your father Arthur Weasley. Works for the Ministry seizing valuable antiques from old families, taking them off the market."

Ron puffed his chest out. "Only when there's Dark Magic involved."

"Of course there's -. " Borgin cut himself off. "Unluckily for you, Mr. Weasley, I've a grudge against a government agency competing with my commerce. For that alone, I'd be turning you in."

Ron grabbed at the frail old man, taking him by the arm with both hands. "Please, sir. Just let me go to my brothers. They'll pay for what got smashed. No need to involve the authorities."

He let Borgin shake him loose. "I won't be turning you over to the authorities, boy. Though by the end, you'll wish you'd begged me to. Now don't move."

Ron was wondering how long he could plausibly be held by old Borgin, even at wand-point, before it was clear he was faking when Corban Yaxley came snapping, apparating into the shop, bleary-eyed and cross as always.

Borgin waved his arms, ranting and cursing as he told Yaxley how Ron arrived, what he'd broken, and what Ron's father did for a living.

"Weasley?" Yaxley said. "You run with Potter and the Granger girl."

"I did," Ron said. "But we've fallen out."

Yaxley folded his arms, suspicious. "Just like that? And now you appear here, in this cabinet, at this moment?"

"It's not that simple," Ron said. "Look here." He reached into his pocket to produce a photograph of himself and Pansy taken at the wedding. "That's my girl, Pansy Parkinson. You know, of THE Parkinsons. She and Potter can't stand each other, and she's far prettier than he is, so he and I have hardly spoken in months."

"Parkinson," Yaxley repeated. He interrogated Ron further, Ron claiming all the while that everything he knew about the cabinet he learned from the twins, repeatedly asking to be let go to get to their event.

"Enough," Yaxley said at last. "You're coming with me, Weasley. And we'll take the cabinet with us this time, Borgin."

"But my brothers - "

"Are no concern of mine," Yaxley said, rounding on Ron, his face twisting into a grin, "or of our Dark Lord's. Now, surrender your wand."

Ron blinked his blue eyes. "What for? I'm under-aged. I wouldn't dare do magic out of school."

Yaxley sneered. "Yes, you appear most law-abiding. Now hand over your wand!" He stood in front of the cabinet, his palm open, waiting, vibrating with impatience.

Ron paused for one beat, then two before dashing toward the back of the shop, knocking old Borgin onto his tailbone and into Yaxley's path as he went. The game couldn't be too straightforward. Even a pawn can move diagonally when the situation is right, and Ron was not ready to hand himself over just yet.

Yaxley snarled with rage, giving chase, stumbling over Borgin and out the back door. In the street, Ron was making for exactly where he said he was going, to Weasleys Wizard Wheezes. As he followed, rounding the corner out of Knockturn and into Diagon Alley, Yaxley was smitten with an impulse to make things easy for himself. He could stupefy the boy and drag him back to Malfoy Manor along with the cabinet, which would take most of the rest of the night, or he could kill him, right here in the street, leaving his body for his oversized family to weep over, and still get a good night's sleep before work tomorrow.

He was already raising his wand when something hit him from behind, striking him hard but with a soft thud, as if he'd been clobbered by a tremendous handbag. The blow sent him sprawling on the pavement. Ahead of him, he could barely make out the boy's trainers pounding against the cobblestones, then pausing as if to look back. Yaxley clenched his wand and succeeded in getting off a leg locker hex. Ron fell where he stood in his moment of hesitation. He was still immobile as Yaxley caught up to him, swearing in disgust, making his preparations to bring both Ron and the cabinet to Malfoy Manor.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy stood on the rug in his own bedchamber, like a servant waiting to be scolded. In his bed lay the Dark Lord, looking from Lucius's vantage as if he was half mummified in gauze bandages. He was lying on his back against Narcissa's pillows, one hand stroking a massive green snake, perhaps unaware of the rattle in his breath.

It was a difficult scene to look on, and Lucius let his eyes wander to a new piece of furniture in the room he had known so well. It was a tall, narrow cabinet made of dark wood and black metal. It must have arrived during the night.

"Lucius," the Dark Lord began. "My heart aches for you and the misfortunes that have befallen your ancient and honorable house."

Lucius bowed. "Thank you, my Lord."

The Dark Lord was pushing against the pillows, rising to sit on the bed. "At long last, the time has come for us to restore your former glory. Don't you agree?"

Lucius was not able to conceal his shudder. Why couldn't the Dark Lod stop meddling with them? He wanted nothing more than to hold onto what he hadn't already lost. But what he said was, "Thank you, my Lord."

The Dark Lord sat supported by the snake coiling higher and higher around him with each word. "Your liberty, your home, your son, your wife - we will bind them all together again, as in the beginning. You and I - we will remove those who have come between you and your family. Severus Snape and a filthy mudblood witch with whom Draco is currently infatuated must be eliminated. Once Narcissa and Draco are free of these influences, the Malfoys will be reconciled, the house will trust you to protect its heir once more, and all will fall back under your command. Son, wife, house."

There was still a dangerous, unspoken condition to these promises. Lucius sensed it like a toxic cloud fading his complexion to a sickly grey. This offer, he knew, was another suicide mission. He had nothing to lose in saying so. "My Lord, I cannot defeat Severus Snape in a duel. He has become too powerful."

"Lucius, Lucius," the Dark Lord crooned, placing a cold hand on Lucius's shoulder. "There is no need to fear. I have not asked you to duel Snape. In fact, I will relish disposing of him myself."

He laid his bandaged arm on the snake's back. "Your task is to bring me the girl, Draco's witch. Bringing her alive is most interesting, but dead will do as well. There is but one difficulty in your task and it lies in the sequence of events. It will delight you to learn that Draco must not be harmed, not while the witch lives. I will entrust you with a grave secret, Lucius. Due to some minor but irksome magic cast by the witch, there are attacks on Draco which vex me as well. This will remain the case until she is dead."

Lucius eyed the bandaged arm.

The Dark Lord nodded. "Yes, isn't it beautiful, Lucius, the trust between us? I know I can trust you not to use this secret to disturb me. You, out of fatherly love," he fought not to sneer as he said the words, "would not attack your son. Even if Draco risks himself to protect the witch, you will find a way to spare him, destroy her, and then bring him back here."

"And," Lucius stammered, "and my Lord will - will - "

"Will take care of Snape and send your wife back, yes." He was rising out of the snake's coils, onto his feet. Lucius took an involuntary step back. "Yes, and from the exalted seat of this splendid estate and family, our new order will roll forth."

The Dark Lord laid his good hand on the cabinet. "This simple device forms a passage to Hogwarts. Your Draco secured it for us himself. On the other side lie our enemies. I will send you through the cabinet first. Once you are there, take out the witch. When you have her, signal through the cabinet for me to make my triumphant return to my old school."

Lucius still frowned. "Forgive me, my Lord, but Dumbledore, is he not - ?"

The Dark Lord chuckled. "You fear the headmaster? No need of that. The cabinet did not arrive here alone. No, it came with intelligence borne by a little red fool."

He turned toward the door. "Wormtail, bring him."

Pettigrew had been right outside the door, an ear pressed to the keyhole listening. He appeared now, shoving Ron Weasley before him. For the first time Ron could remember, Lucius Malfoy looked at him without sneering.

But Lucius was not what concerned Ron now. Harry had told Ron that, if he was brought before the Dark Lord, he must hold his head high and face him defiantly, looking right into his burning red eyes.

"It's a bold thing to do and it will make you feel brave even if you're not," Harry had said.

However, in the presence of the Dark Lord himself, the advice was impossible. Ron was almost grateful when Pettigrew forced him to his knees and pushed his head down.

"Blood-traitor," the Dark Lord addressed him, "my servants tell me you have news of Hogwarts."

"A bit," Ron said.

"A bit goes in a horse's mouth to drive the whole animal. Now speak," the Dark Lord ordered. "What can you tell me of your headmaster?"

"They've already told you what I said, haven't they?"

Pettigrew kicked him in the back of his knee, knocking Ron forward, onto his hands. "Speak when you're called upon. Repeat it."

"Dumbledore is injured, in his hand," Ron said, glancing toward the Dark Lord's own injury. "It's a curse, black and creeping. He's in bed all day long now. Snape's been trying to treat it but he hasn't been good for much since Malfoy's mum came over."

Lucius sighed at his feet.

"You see, Lucius," the Dark Lord grinned. "Now that the headmaster is weak, we find ourselves arrived at the very best time for you to lead us into battle."

Even though Ron hadn't managed to look him in the face, he did muster the courage to challenge the Dark Lord's plans but uttering a single scoffing breath of laughter.

In his usual state of haughty disdain, the Dark Lord might have ignored it. But today, he snarled. "Wormtail," and on his signal, Pettigrew kicked Ron in the stomach, sending him falling from his knees to lying supine on the floor.

Ron groaned, but was angry enough to say, "Good thing for Hogwarts you're too scared to go there yourself."

Pettigrew grabbed Ron by the scruff of his jacket, jerking his face upward, holding it to the tip of the wand the Dark Lord pointed at him. "You think you can goad me with schoolyard taunts into stepping into your Hogwarts trap? Oh, no. I won't be following Lucius until he's cleared the room around our sister cabinet. I was going to send him with a crushing, leveling curse but using you, Mr. Weasley, as his human shield will do far better."

Pettigrew kicked Ron's flank, sending him rolling onto his side, curling into a heap on the rug. He was winding up to kick him again when his trousers came down just as the back of his jacket was pulled up over his head. Blinded, hobbled, and yelling in alarm, Wormtail staggered and tripped over an ottoman.

"Up, Lucius," the Dark Lord commanded, ignoring his other bumbling servant. "Prepare yourself, your wand, your hostage. Go to Hogwarts and hold him until you can kill the witch. Slaughter him, slaughter all of them but Draco if you must in order to destroy her. Then summon me to finish the rest."

Ron rocked on the floor over, moaning over his bruises. And as he was hefted to his feet, his hand slipped into his pocket, finding a large, dull coin there, and pressing hard on its engraving.

* * *

In his office, during his noon hour break, Albus Dumbledore was meeting with Harry Potter, sharing a lunch of hearty stew and fresh crusty bread, trying to distract Harry from his impulse to leave school and go searching for Ron Weasley. It was a distraction doomed to failure. Dumbledore knew it for sure when the enchanted galleon in his pocket began to burn hot.

He stood up with a jolt, bread crumbs tumbling from his beard. "Harry," he said, slamming one hand on the top of his desk. "It's time. Ron is calling."

"What? Now?"

"Yes. You know what it means. We have less than half an hour before he arrives here in the castle with Death Eaters."

Harry sprang to his feet, ready to sprint to the Room of Hidden Things to fight his terrifying enemy once again.

"Yes, go, Harry," Dumbledore said. "Go, but not alone. On your way, get the Malfoys. I'll gather the Order."

Harry was obedient but not happy about being asked to make a detour to the school's newly revived married quarters. At least, he reasoned, he was sent during lunchtime, not at an hour connected to - well, bedtime. He rapped on the door, loud and hard, stepping back to scan the length of the corridor, looking toward the door to the Room of Hidden Things. He waited - and waited a little more.

Finally, Draco answered the door. Harry pretended not to notice Draco was still in the act of pulling a long-sleeved black t-shirt over his hips as he came into view, but the distinctive fitted white trousers demanded an inquiry. "Malfoy, you're not off to play quidditch right now, are you? 'Cause it'll have to wait - "

"Oh, is that Harry?" Hermione was peeking around the door, only her head, one shoulder, and one arm visible - enough for Harry to be able to tell she was dressed in a thick green jumper, the top half of the quidditch uniform Malfoy was wearing from the waist down.

Harry stood stunned.

Draco twitched into action first, using two fingers against her forehead to shove Hermione into hiding behind the door.

"Harry," she called from behind it anyway. "Is there news?"

"Will you get dressed? You're traumatizing Potter, coming to the door like that," Draco hissed at her, barely loud enough for Harry to hear.

The sound of giggling trailed away.

Draco was fighting back a grin as he turned back to Harry asking, "Come on, Potter, what is it already?"

Harry shook his head as if clearing away a bad spell. "It's Ron," he said. "He's sent a signal to Dumbledore through the galleon. Come to the room with me - erm, as soon as you're ready."

Within fifteen minutes of Dumbledore receiving the signal, everyone involved in the plan was gathered in front of the vanishing cabinet on the seventh floor: Harry, the Malfoys, Dumbledore, Kingsley, Tonks and her Aurors, Remus looking ragged after a full moon, Professors McGonagall and Snape, and one risky last minute addition, Narcissa Malfoy.

As a show of her good faith, Narcissa left her wand with Ann Granger and came armed only with Snape's satchel, prepared to act as a healer. Snape hadn't wanted her to come so soon after her injury, but she insisted, agreeing to let him wrap her up in a Disillusionment spell for her own protection from her former comrades and to keep Draco from being distracted by her presence. She stood quiet, unnoticed against the rear wall of the room.

The high heap of abandoned goods which had once been spread throughout the entire space still occupied most of the room. As the wizards waited in the quiet for Ron to arrive, they could hear the pile still shifting and settling, like something alive.

The nearest things to the cabinet itself were Tonks and the Aurors, their wands drawn. And even though the room was dead quiet, she still called "Shh!" when the rolling magic began. Gradually, as if advancing from somewhere far away, a sound washed over the room, like the rush and groan of water past the timbers of a wooden ship being borne up and then down on the surge of a tide.

"That's it," Draco said, in a whisper heard by all of them.

The handle in the cabinet door was turning, clicking. As soon as the clasp was clear of its housing, the two tall thin figures, tightly linked together, burst through the cabinet door meant for only one. With a tumbling thud they appeared in the room, shuffling and struggling against each other, the arm of the rear person clamped around the throat of the fore one.

Ron was the person held captive 'round his neck, and the person holding him, his wand jabbing sharply into the underside of his hostage's chin, his hold so tight Ron's face was bright red, was Lucius Malfoy.

Draco announced their arrival, morose, disbelieving. "Dad?"

Lucius's eyes flicked in Draco's direction for just a moment before he shouted, "Don't come any closer," to the Aurors closing in on him. "This boy's blood means less than nothing to me, and I will spill it freely - "

"Father, don't," Draco said.

"No, I'm right here," Harry said at the same time, stepping forward, his wand at his side but not pointed at anyone. "It's me your filthy master wants, not Ron. Take me to Voldemort. This has nothing to do with Ron."

"Get back, Potter," Lucius spat. "Have a shred of modesty for once. It's not you, it's Granger he wants today. I will spare this boy's life only in exchange for the Granger girl's."

Draco and Harry met in front of where Hermione was standing, shoulder to shoulder, barricading her. Harry let Draco say it. "Absolutely not."

Lucius tightened his hold on Ron's throat. "Then Weasley dies."

"It's alright," Hermione said in a cool level voice from between Draco and Harry. "Stand aside. I'll go with him."

"No," the boys said in unison. Even Ron, his fingers pulling hard on Lucius's arm, was shaking his head no.

"Dad, stop it. If you don't want Potter, then take me. Or take both of us," Draco said.

Lucius thrashed his head from side to side in a vehement refusal. "Stop it, Draco. You know it won't work that way. I need the witch who cast the - I need the witch. Stand aside."

Hermione took Draco's arm in her hands, peering around him, still willing to surrender herself but waiting, trusting as he negotiated with his father.

"Dad, stop," Draco said. "Whatever he's promised you in return for Hermione, it's a lie."

"Don't you think I know that?" Lucius shouted back at him. "After all these years, how could I fail to understand that? But I am desolate, Draco. Defeated. I live a life so miserable the half-truths in his lies are still the best, the only hope I have. Please Draco, for our family, our line, give me the witch. Don't make me hurt this boy."

Draco shook his head, tears forming in his eyes, his voice cracking as he said, "Listen, Father. This witch is our family. Hermione is my wife. She is your best and only hope for our family - for yourself, Dad."

Lucius clenched his jaw, speaking through gritted teeth. "No, you don't understand, my boy. Nothing compares to the Dark Lord. You don't know how great and terrible he can be - "

"I do, Dad. And with the help of my wife, my teachers, mother and - " he paused, "my friends, I have resisted him. I refused to give him Hermione's name when he demanded I reveal it at Christmas. And perhaps you were there with him when he summoned me through the Dark Mark and I did not come."

Lucius stood holding Ron, panting into his ear, remembering the chaos in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor the morning Draco did not appear when called.

Draco went on. "We were told we wouldn't survive if we refused his call. But look at me, Father. Here I am. Here is my wife. Trust in us, not some sick and evil monster too cowardly to even step through that cabinet to face Potter himself."

Lucius did not slacken his hold on Ron, even as his own eyes shimmered with unshed tears. "It's not just Potter. The headmaster is here too isn't he?"

"I am," Dumbledore said, appearing without any other sound at Lucius's side. "Hello, Lucius," he smiled. "Let the boy go. Let him go and stay here with us, under our protection."

Lucius scoffed. "And then what? Live on in hiding, with nothing?"

"Dad," Draco said, "Live on with me."

Lucius panned his gaze over the people assembled there. Narcissa stood still wrapped in Snape's spell, holding her breath, shaking with fear for her family. She could not tell whether Lucius saw her through her spell or not. Whatever he saw in the faces surrounding him, it moved him to smirk.

In a single, fluid motion, he shoved Ron to the floor, spun in something like a pirouette toward the cabinet, and dived inside it.

A gasp went through the room.

Tonks swore. "That was it? He got away?"

She was moving to step up into the cabinet herself, when Remus caught her around the waist, leaning over her shoulder to say, "Dora, wait. Listen."

There was the roll and rise that always came with a passage through the cabinet, but this time, instead of abating back into silence, the rise seemed to build, not a gentle tide but a mounting wave, the cabinet's magic escalating to a low rumble, growing to the deafening groan of huge iron ship tossed by the sea, grating against bedrock.

Something else, something massive, was coming through the cabinet.

There was a howl and a flash of sickly green as Lucius Malfoy returned, collapsing outside the cabinet, onto the floor in a heap of brocade, tooled leather, black silk, and dirty white gauze.

He scrambled to his feet, shouting. "Here he is, Potter, Professor." But as the pile of fabric on the floor began to stir, Lucius's air of triumph turned to terror. He fled toward the exit. "Come, Draco, run! Get her out!"

From the pile of bandages and black robes, arms and legs and a hairless head was rising. Lucius had brought back the Dark Lord himself. There was much here for him to face. Dumbledore was not bedridden. Potter was not afraid. And Draco - Draco and his wife might just have something to hope for.

Disoriented and speechless with rage, Voldemort was drawing himself up to stand in front of the cabinet, looking over his shoulder, through its door for Pettigrew or Yaxley or anyone else who had seen Lucius snatch him from the Malfoy bedchamber - someone to guard or rescue him.

No one was coming.

Teeth bared, the Dark Lord glared past the wands leveled at him, searching for Lucius.

"You dare," he hissed at him. Without using words or a wand, he hurled a curse at him, green like an execution. A shriek rang out as the curse engulfed Lucius's body, not in his own voice but in Narcissa's. She appeared behind Snape, against the wall, following Snape as he lunged for Lucius's falling body, catching him in his arms. She dropped to her knees beside them, feeling her pockets for the wand she'd left behind.

Helpless, terrified she was pleading, "Severus, help him. Please, help us!"

While Voldemort was consumed with exacting revenge on the senior Malfoys, Dumbledore took Harry by the wrist before reeling around to speak to Hermione. "Now!" was all he had to say to explain everything to her.

She was ready but Draco was in shock, gaping at the sight of his father laid out on the floor as Snape and his mother worked over his stiff, motionless body.

Hermione took her husband by both arms. "Draco. Draco, stay with me, my darling. Our charm - we need it now."

He wrenched himself out of his grief, letting Hermione lead him as they took each other but their left forearms. As the Dark Lord was raising his wand to finish the mass murder of Snape and of Draco's parents, Draco and Hermione simultaneously bent to kiss the charms they'd cast in the flesh of one another's arms.

The same blue-white light that always enveloped them at these moments appeared again. In the beginning, these had been lines of light; at their wedding, they had been lightning bolts; and today they were the source of a blinding white flash that didn't end. The light stayed, permeating everything, burning, blinding, purifying.

In its glare, Harry's body collapsed. With his hand already on his arm, Dumbledore pulled him in, holding him as he screamed and writhed, feeling the Dark Lord's anguish as his frayed soul was torn away from the young Malfoys' matrimonial bond. Raw and tattered with pain and rage, he felt himself falling away, sinking fast enough to steal his breath, his life.

Just when Harry wasn't sure he could bear it any longer, there were new hands and arms around him. When he couldn't see, Ron had followed the sound of Harry's voice, and had come crawling across the floor, calling his name until his hands closed around his ankles.

Someone else was there too, with long, thin gnarled hands like willow branches. Harry knew for certain it was Professor McGonagall when he heard her voice.

"Come back, dear boy, come back to us."

In a moment more, the light was fading, and as it went, Harry's cries grew quiet. When he could see again, he found himself in a nest of loving arms, exhausted but alive and well.

One voice still screamed: the Dark Lord's.

"Up, Harry," Dumbledore said.

The arms that had held him set Harry on his feet. Dumbledore led him to where Tom Riddle lay agonizing on the floor. As they went, Harry surveyed the room. No one seemed hurt. Mr. Malfoy had been hurt before the light came but he was now gone. Madam Malfoy and Snape must have whisked him away to the hospital wing - either that or they'd tipped him out the window.

Draco and Hermione were still there but they didn't seem aware of anyone else. They stood gripping each other by their left arms, their eyes closed, foreheads pressed together as Hermione spoke into Draco's face, telling him he couldn't follow his parents just yet - not until the end.

On the floor, the Dark Lord lay betrayed and abandoned by his followers, senseless and wounded.

"He's pathetic," Harry said, his voice still breathless.

"Yet incredibly dangerous and growing more so by the minute. Do not allow him to recover, Harry. Weakened as he is, you may now send him out of his physical form," Dumbledore said.

Harry staggered. "You mean, kill him? With a killing curse?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "With his soul split into horcruxes, he cannot yet be killed. But he can be scattered, broken up, blown away, giving us more of the time we will need to seek out his hiding places."

Harry nodded. "So no matter what I do right now, it's not over."

Dumbledore nodded. "It's not over. But we now have hope that someday, it may be. Now Harry, the incantation you seek is 'Insubstatum.'"

Silence fell as Harry lifted his wand. Draco and Hermione opened their eyes. Remus closed an arm around Tonks's shoulders. Everyone braced themselves in their own ways.

"Insubstatum!"

The Dark Lord's grey complexion grew ashier still, lifting and flaking along its surface, sifting against itself like ash and sand. The dusty mass rose, twisting and swirling into a vortex the size of a man before blowing up and into the pile of ruined, rejected, hidden things

Silence had nearly returned to the room when Harry spun around and blasted the vanishing cabinet to splinters.

It was Draco who led the cheer.


	52. Chapter 52

**AN: Full disclosure, this fic started right before my father got terribly sick. I wrote the last half of the story sitting at his bedside, late, late at night. Writing this was my self-care. Thank you for participating in that. I didn't shift in the storyline to include heroic dads on purpose. It arose naturally out of the way of the story, the way of my grief and my gratitude for my own dad. He was definitely more of a Dr. Granger than a Lucius Malfoy, and what we went through together as I wrote this guaranteed that all dads get their redemption.**

Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix who had witnessed the second insubstantiation of Tom Riddle were meeting in the headmaster's office, planning the search for horcruxes which would have to come next. Instead of pacing behind his desk, in front of his phoenix, Dumbledore led the discussion from where he lay on a sofa, one arm folded against his middle, blackened fingers barely visible at the end of his sleeve.

He would take Harry with him to retrieve one last horcrux, a locket that belonged to Salazar Slytherin, and then he would go quietly. Harry would do the rest.

Floors below them, in the hospital wing, Narcissa, Draco, and Hermione Malfoy, and Severus Snape stood at Lucius's bedside. He had been hit with a killing spell diminished by being cast wordlessly and wandlessly and by a wizard already badly injured. But the wizard was still the Dark Lord, and his imperfect spell carried enough force to eliminate all signs of life in Lucius the instant it overtook him and knocked him to the floor.

He lay glassy-eyed and deathly still until Severus Snape administered a Rennervate spell on the floor of the Room of Hidden Things. At the touch of Snape's spell, Lucius had blinked his eyes, returning Snape's dark, searching, all but frantic look. He spoke, barely audible but as forcefully as he could. He told Snape what he'd just said to Draco.

"Get her out."

In the next moment, the light of Draco and Hermione's matrimonial spell had washed over everything. Snape pulled Lucius's face into his robes, shielding his eyes. Narcissa held his limp hands and ducked her face into Snape's shoulder. They huddled together until the light abated. As soon as she could see again, Narcissa was tugging them both to standing, begging Lucius to live and Snape to help.

When it was all over, and Draco and Hermione saw that his parents were gone, they left the Order to gather the splinters of the cabinet and went after them. Lucius lay in his hospital cot, his breath rasping in and out of him in something deeper than sleep. Doctors from St. Mungo's Hospital had been sent for. They were on their way to examine him and see whether he ought to be brought to the hospital for treatment, or if he should be left with his family to finish what might be his final hours.

Hermione steeled her courage and took Professor Snape aside. "Do you think, sir, that we could Rennervate him again? I know it can be dangerous, but if he's not going to recover, it would let Draco speak with him afinal time. It's been so long, and so much is changed."

Snape nodded but continued to frown, whispering a reply. "It is risky. Lucius's present condition could not be more fragile. Another spell could be one too many. The doctors from St. Mungo's will be able to tell us better."

She wasn't sure he was right. Lucius was cursed with darker magic than most healers ever encounter. No one knew the Dark Lord's curses better than Snape. But she would not press the issue - not yet.

From several paces away, Snape and Hermione watched the Malfoy family trio - adoring them, aching for them and with them. Lucius was resting in bed, the rasp of his breathing the only sound in the room. Narcissa was perched on the mattress at his side, smoothing his hair from his brow as Draco knelt on the other side, holding his hand. Even from a very short distance, they appeared to be a model family, perfectly matched to each other, predestined, not to be tampered with.

In truth, of course, it was an illusion, a mess. Lucius had betrayed both his wife and son, exchanging their peace and safety for his own life, even if it was a miserable life in prison. After he let the Dark Lord into Narcissa's home, into the flesh of Draco's arm, Lucius's family had still loved him, still hoped in him. They suffered for months before moving themselves away from the ugly things he had made most precious to himself - more precious than them.

What did it mean now that, in what might have been his last act, Lucius had taken an enormous step back in his family's direction, vindicating the hope they once had in him?

* * *

Hours before, as he had waited with Pettigrew in the manor, the Dark Lord had recognized the signs of Lucius's return through the vanishing cabinet. This was it: the signal he had called for to let him know Hogwarts had been made ready for his arrival. The witch might be dead already, the headmaster as well, and in mere moments, he would step into Hogwarts as its conqueror.

He chuckled, stepping closer, caressing the wood with his good hand as the cabinet's magic rolled with the return of his docile, idiot servant. Only it wasn't the bowed head of the obsequious Lucius Malfoy he had always known who reappeared in the cabinet. It was a ferocious face, vengeful with bared teeth, wild white hair flying as Lucius lurched out the door, caught the Dark Lord in a tight grip, pinning his arms, chafing his injuries, crushing him against his chest, and tugging backward, falling into the cabinet with all Lucius's weight and strength.

Wormtail not only watched them go, but kicked the door closed as they went, fearing retaliation from the Order defending the school. He ran from the room, screaming through Malfoy Manor, calling out to the others that the Dark Lord was lost.

In the darkness of the cabinet, Lucius and his master fought, mashed against each other between the wooden walls, in the confined space, the Dark Lord's wand was trapped in the folds of his robes. Lucius tried to cast a silencing spell, but the space was too small and chaotic to be sure if it worked.

In this state of fury, struggle, and confusion, the pair of them burst through the cabinet on the other side, in the room on the seventh floor of Hogwarts. As Draco promised, the headmaster, the Order, Harry Potter, and Lucius's family were waiting there to save him, if they could.

Whether they could save him or not hardly mattered to him. Lucius did not deliver the Dark Lord for himself. But whether they could save him or not mattered an awful lot to Lucius's family.

In the hospital wing now, Narcissa tucked his hair behind his ear. "You did right, Lucius. At long last, you did right."

As she spoke, his rasping breath rose to a clatter, the pressure in his grip on Draco's hand grew tighter.

Draco leaned into his face. "I'm here, Father. I promised, and I'm here." He looked up at his mother, tears in his eyes. "Mother, do something. I promised he could live on with us. He has to get well. Please." He was frantic with grief, almost mad. Hermione left Snape's side to take her husband in her arms where he sat.

Narcissa showed Draco her empty hands. "I have nothing else to offer, Draco. Not even my wand."

He stood up, still holding Lucius's hand. "I'll fetch it for you," he said, but then looked down, puzzled, as if he didn't know how to bring his mother her wand without letting go of his father's hand.

Hermione stroked his arms, calming his agitation, getting him to sit down on the bed. "I'll get it, darling. You stay."

"But then you'll be gone - " His voice was getting louder, his breath shallower.

"Only for a moment, Draco - "

"Nevermind," Snape interrupted. "Calm yourself, Draco. There is one remedy I have not yet attempted. It requires the compression of his chest cavity and is, therefore, dangerous physically as well as magically. I can guarantee neither Lucius's safety nor his survival."

Draco was on his feet again. "We've nothing to lose. Do it anyway, please sir."

Snape hesitated, still not drawing his wand. "Magic as dark as this requires dark magic in return. I can try but be warned I have never seen anything so filthy as this carried out here, in this school."

"No, you don't care about dark magic in the school," Draco said, shouting now. "You're holding back because if Father dies, my mother can't go back to him."

"Draco, no," Narcissa said. "He's holding back for the opposite reason: because if your father succumbs to the Dark Lord's spell in spite of Severus's efforts, Severus will forever be misunderstood and blamed for botching the counter-spell on purpose. He is blamed if he withholds, blamed if he tries and fails."

"Then he'd better try and succeed!" Draco shouted, glaring at Snape across the hospital wing before collapsing to sit on the bed again.

It was too much for Hermione. "I've got a wand," she said. "If no one's going to help right now, 'll cast a Rennervate. Narcissa, stand clear, if you please."

"This impatience is counterproductive," Snape was saying, Draco cringing at the sound of his voice. "St. Mungo's is coming. It is better that we wait."

Narcissa was rising, stepping toward Snape. "Severus, Draco is right. Try and succeed - "

"How can I - ?"

"And what's more," she went on, "no one can help us like you can, Severus. No one at St. Mungo's. No one at all. I tell you, we need you. And I tell you this as well. I choose you. Whether Lucius lives or dies. If he lives, he can make a virtuous new life for himself, but without me as his wife."

Draco choked. "Mother?"

She forced herself to ignore him, focusing her words, her look on Snape. "My son is grown now, with a wife of his own. I am free to choose you, Severus. Fear nothing. Work your magic on this man."

She was close enough to Snape to take a letter from her pocket and press it against his chest.

"This is from our solicitor," she said as he read it. "If Lucius is well enough and willing to sign it, we will no longer be husband and wife. If he gets well and refuses to sign it, I will meet him later at the Wizengamot and compel him to sign it there. It is dated yesterday. Please try to save him. I am yours."

Snape broke the line of sight between himself and Narcissa. His hands and shoulders were shaking as he returned the parchment to her. He still hadn't drawn his wand.

Hermione squeezed Draco's shoulders where she held him down. "Trust him, Draco. Ask him to try the counter-curse."

Draco swallowed. "Yes. Professor, please."

Snape shook himself, coming to life, preparing for the counterspell by leading Narcissa toward the door. "It is a wicked bit of magic - nasty," he told her. "I need a tear from your eye, but I can take it now and use it later. You needn't stay to see it all unfold."

She shook her head. "Wicked magic? It's a bit late to worry about exposing me to that. This is what we've made ourselves of, Severus," she said. "We brought this into our own lives and we can't look away from it now."

He shuddered all the same. "Very well. Let us begin."

On the table next to Lucius's head, Snape conjured a cauldron. He muttered an incantation over it and the iron sides lost their matt black appearance, shining now with the same sickly green as the flash of a killing spell. He sighed and bowed his head, "Miss Granger, if you would forgive me?" he said, his hand extended. "I require a drop of your blood."

Her face blanched white but she nodded and let Snape take her hand. He held it over the cauldron, closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. When he opened them, he was chanting. "The right hand split, for the Mudblood's pain." With his wand, he lanced the tip of her thumb, squeezed a drop into the cauldron, and released her.

Looking more sorry, he extended a hand to Draco. "Now you," he said. "The left one."

Draco offered his arm, and with a small silver knife, Snape shaved a flake of burnt, black skin from the Dark Mark branded into Draco's flesh and added it to the cauldron.

He chanted, "Traces of our Lord, power made plain."

Releasing Draco, he came toward Narcissa. Instead of taking her hand, Snape gently dabbed the tip of his wand into the corner of her eye.

"Tears of the loved one, earnestly shed."

Her tear magnified itself on the tip of Snape's wand, and he dropped it into the cauldron as well.

He leaned over the mixture again, chanting low, nearly singing - every time he cast a spell, Draco knew, Snape sang. He lifted the cauldron from the table and set it on Lucius's chest, delicately, balancing it, letting go by degrees so he could stop if Lucius couldn't bear the pressure.

At last, he let go, standing tall, but was sighing once again. He leaned low over the cauldron. "Spit of the enemy, the soul not fled."

His saliva sizzled within the murky haze drifting over the rim of the cauldron. He didn't move to stir it, something Hermione always struggled with in potions. Not stirring, standing back and waiting, was the most difficult step of all. The fog drifted slowly out of the cauldron, so slowly Hermione wondered if she was only imagining she saw it move. Yet in due time, Lucius's entire body was covered in the mist. It was no longer green, like a killing curse, but orange, like a rising sun.

All at once, Lucius sat up. The cauldron clattered against the floor, black and iron again. Draco rushed to support him, holding him by each arm as he coughed against the lingering weight of the cauldron and the curse. Catching his breath, Lucius's hand found Draco, his palm forming into a curve around the back of Draco's head. He pushed their foreheads together, panting.

Draco held his breath, eyes wide and staring into his father's face.

Slowly, Lucius began to laugh, quiet and breathy. "Draco, my boy. Did you get him?" he said.

Draco laughed back at him. "Yes, Dad, we did. Me and Hermione and Potter and the Order. We got him, at least for a few more years. He's dust and we're safe now."

Lucius patted Draco's head. "Excellent boy." With that, he fell back against the pillows, still laughing faintly.

Narcissa bent over him again, wiping his sweating brow with a damp cloth. His eyes cracked open, and he laboured to raise a hand to stop her. "Cissa," he said, "You left me in the manor."

She dipped her cloth in the basin, wringing it out as she said, "Yes. You know why."

He raised his hand to stop her from wiping his forehead again. "I have something for you, in the inner pocket of my cloak."

She searched his clothes and drew out a thick swath of parchment. It was a copy of the letter from her solicitor, and Lucius had already signed it.

"You see, Severus," Lucius said, barely above a whisper. "I am not your enemy. And a man who cares for my family, as you have done, is not mine."

Snape folded his arms, replying nothing.

Lucius touched Narcissa's face with one weakened hand. "I can change myself into a better father for Draco and for his Hermione and for generations of Malfoys to come. But there are consequences for what I have done. And losing you, the darling wife of my youth, is one of them. Forgive me."

She took his hand from her face and kissed it. "I do."

"You do what?" Draco said. "What just happened? It wasn't -"

"It was, darling," Narcissa said. "Do better with your own wife. But don't trouble your father with it now. Look at him."

Lucius was fading again, happy, no longer doomed, but exhausted. It was time to leave him to rest. His eyes had closed again before Snape finished gathering up his cauldron from underneath the neighbouring empty cot.

Outside the door of the hospital wing, Narcissa would not let Snape take leave of her. "My injuries have healed," she was saying, "And as soon as my owl reaches London, I'll be divorced. Which means, I am not sleeping in the hospital wing anymore, especially not now that Lucius is there. I am sleeping in the dungeons, with you."

He covered her mouth with his hand, hushing her. "By the stars, woman, mind how you say things. I am a teacher at this school."

She laughed into his hand. "Yes, Professor. And you have the best-guarded, most private sleeping quarters in the castle, I'm sure. So take me to them."

She linked her arms around his waist, leaning into him. He pried her hands apart, placing them by her sides.

She faked a pout. "Don't tell me you've changed your mind about me already."

"Of course not, Cissa."

"Cissa darling," she corrected him.

He spoke low into her ear. "Narcissa, you will kindly reserve displays of affection for when we are alone."

"And when will that be?" she asked. "Where will that be?"

Snape sighed - a different sigh than she'd heard him use yet today. Her arms had wound themselves around his torso, inside his robes again. It was making his pulse rise and his cheeks flush and there was nothing for it but to tell her, "Come with me now. But first - "

He coiled another Disillusionment spell around her. She followed him across the Entrance Hall, seeming to the students they passed like a breeze moving behind him.

"Who was the last woman to be in here?" she said as the door to his study closed behind them.

He sniffed. "Are we counting your daughter-in-law as a woman?"

She scoffed. "No, someone not a student."

In the sanctuary of his dungeon office, for the first time since he carried her up the hill to Hogwarts, Snape closed his arms around Narcissa. He wasn't stiffly resisting her for the sake of propriety, but opening himself to her, bending and tilting to receive her curves and contours. Teasing him with affection he both desperately wanted and could not accept had been exciting for Narcissa. Having him reach for her, eagerly taking her in was a new kind of exciting. Her heart lurched with an unexpected thud.

She was speechless as he said, "The last woman here would have been you, coming to meet me early in the morning to discuss Draco's task."

She wrinkled her nose, which he had never seen her do and which almost made him gasp at how charming he found it. She was saying, "That is not a good memory. I was mad then."

Snape clucked his tongue. "I rather think you're madder now."

He tightened his hold on her, pulling her up toward his face. Her expression smoothed, her eyes wide, pupils dilated. He slid a long, thin hand along her hot neck and into her cool silky blond hair, tipping her face upward. Snape kissed her tenderly, with love and without hating himself for it. She relaxed into him, supple and warm, open, leading him deeper. He didn't taste or feel like Lucius, and she chased after what he was, curious and famished for it.

He pulled away, breath ragged. "There's a sofa. I can sleep on out here in the study tonight. You can have the bedroom in the private suite." At his words, the rear door opened, revealing the rooms where he lived.

She peered through it but held onto him. "You are a gentleman, Severus."

He closed his eyes, bowing his face into the top of her head. "I am careful. The last time I - loved someone, I handled it badly. I couldn't have failed worse at it. No matter how slowly, how carefully I must proceed, I will not fail with you, Cissa."

She grinned into his face. "I have heard many romantic speeches in my time, Severus, and none of them has ever had the word 'proceed' in it before today." She rose onto her toes, bringing his hawkish nose to touch her small, straight one.

He spoke. "Are you making fun of me, Madam?"

She laughed. "No, Professor. I am making everything of you."

"I'm going to stay with him awhile," Draco told Hermione. "Even if he's asleep, I just want to look at him, hear him breathing. Make sure he's alright."

"Shall I leave you alone then?" Hermione asked.

"No, never," Draco answered, pulling her into his lap. "Stay with us too."

She tipped her cheek against his head as Draco watched his father sleep. She laughed softly. "It's almost uncanny, the way the pair of you look so much alike. If I didn't know better I'd wonder if you were his homunculus."

Draco faked a retch. "No, I'm a fully human being. How can you say - "

"I didn't," she laughed. "I said I know better. You heard me."

Draco leaned his face into the softness of her chest. "Looking at him does make me wonder what our - you know - the next generation would look like."

She sat back. "Do not make me pregnant out of vain curiosity, Draco Malfoy."

He re-settled his face against her, cuddling her harder the more she tried to be stern. "Come, darling, don't you want a little son who looks just like us?"

She scoffed. "Do you mean 'us' as in you and your only very recently reformed father? Or 'us' as in you and me? Don't forget that I will be contributing genetic material to our children too, Draco. And unlike your parents, you and I do not look like siblings."

Draco placed a hand on his heart. "By all means, I insist you contribute genetic material. I won't have it any other way."

"And so," she went on, "there is a distinct possibility our son might not look like an elegant country lord but like a tufty-haired London dentist."

Draco paused for only slightly too long before he said, "That would be fine."

She punched his arm. "Well, it will still be years before we meet any of our children," she said, folding her arms. "Hogwarts may have disused married students' quarters, but it has no nurseries."

Draco raised one eyebrow. "Doesn't it? I'll check in "Hogwarts a History" once we're back home. I'm sure I remember something about nurseries."

She was smiling coyly. "I suppose you could do research when we get home, or…" She whispered the rest in his ear. "But I will be the one casting the contraception charm."

"Right," Draco said. "Home it is."

**AN: Please keep watching your notifications for the epilogue to Draco Takes a Mark appearing in a few days. Thanks again for your support.**


	53. Epilogue

"No," Hermione said, leaning against the door to hold it closed. "No, we're doing it their way this time, and that means you can't come in and see me."

"But my - you know - it's in your bag," Draco called from the corridor.

"And with good reason," she said. "You're awful at controlling yourself at non-magical functions. You can have it back when it's over."

He knocked in rhythm with her name. "Hermione, I'll be good. Open up."

"No, it's tradition. You aren't supposed to see me yet."

He dropped his voice. "Darling, it's not as if - come on, _Aloho_ \- dammit, that's right, you've got my…"

Draco went grumbling away from the door of the room where Hermione, her mother, and mother-in-law were getting dressed up on a spring morning.

Narcissa Malfoy was snickering at her son as she turned before the floor length mirror in her apple green Chanel suit, tugging at its tailoring as if it wasn't already flawless, reducio and engorgio-ing the corsage on her lapel. "Are you certain these robes are appropriate for today, Ann? I feel like they need something."

Ann scoffed. "If you had anything more, you'd be upstaging Hermione. You look lovely, Cissa, elegant. Stop fretting."

She sniffed. "Well frankly, Hermione's dress could use something too."

She wasn't wrong. It was the time in history where most wedding dresses were strapless and simple. Hermione's was no exception, made of smooth satin, cut in an A-line, the skirt long and flaring but nothing like a ballgown. Narcissa could bear that but she had to know, "Why white? It's ghostly. Especially the shroud part."

Ann clucked her tongue. "Shroud - it's a bridal veil, Cissa. Really."

Hermione would never have become a Malfoy if she didn't find this kind of cheek endearing, and she knew to smirk at her mother-in-law's fussiness. She said, "Honestly, you're as bad as your son. It's a Muggle tradition for the bride to wear a white gown and white veil."

"Even brides who had their first weddings to their grooms four years previously?" Cissa asked, leaving her own clothes to pick at the veil pinned to Hermione's hair.

She meant well but was raising the frizz so Ann delicately nudged her aside. "Well, none of the Granger relatives knows Hermione was married as a seventeen-year-old. Draco is her long-time school sweetheart, as far as they know, but in a few weeks they will all be able to tell she's soon to make him a father - "

"Which is another argument against me wearing white, actually," Hermione interjected.

"Is it?" Narcissa said. "Why so?"

"Never mind any of that," Ann said, smoothing the skirt of her suit, identical to Narcissa's except for in powder blue. "Let's simply enjoy ourselves today. Some of you have waited so long for this. Tim missed the first wedding completely, as did you and Severus. Little Brian wasn't even born when it happened, of course. Then there's Lucius."

"Oh, Lucius won't be coming," Hermione said. "He owled to let Draco know for certain only this morning. Can't bring himself to leave Nairobi just yet."

Narcissa shook her head. "Still doesn't trust that his pardon isn't an elaborate Ministry ruse to entrap him, more like."

Ann hummed. "It's for the best. But how is it, Hermione, that you know what Draco found out only this morning, on a day you slept at our house so you wouldn't see him? He was in your room this morning, wasn't he?"

Even though she'd been married four years, Hermione was blushing and sputtering at being caught. "Weddings - they're so romantic, and then there's the nostalgia, and I'm finally not quite so sick all the time, and having Draco stop by gave me a chance to - to confiscate his wand - "

Ann scoffed. "Is that what young wizards are calling it these days?"

Narcissa was cackling like a Muggle's Halloween witch. "Right. However it happened, tradition thwarted. And in that line, let's change the colour of this monochrome wedding dress, shall we?"

"No," Ann and Hermione said at once.

"Trust me, Cissa. It will be nice," Ann said. "Grin and bear it as we Muggles put on a lovely, modest wedding, with all our odd Muggle trimmings."

"Oh!" Hermione exclaimed, something black catching her eye as it darted through the garden below their window. "Looks like Severus is having a terrible time keeping Brian from nearly falling into the pond without using magic."

Cissa parted the curtains to better see her son and husband. "Oh, aren't they darling?" she said. "Darling and, yes, about to be drowned. Forgive me, Hermione. I'll meet you downstairs."

* * *

Outside in the garden, in the pleasant spring air, Pansy Weasley sat sweltering beneath a parasol, Ron fanning her face with the commemorative programme Hermione's cousin was handing out at the head of the path.

"No one tells you these things when you marry up with an old family Slytherin girl," Ron was telling Harry over his shoulder as he fanned. "No one tells you that all the sweet doting the girls do over boys at the dinner table is completely reversed once they're pregnant."

Harry shrugged. "Makes sense though."

Pansy batted Ron on the head with her own programme. "And no one told me Weasleys are so vulnerable to spell-slips when it comes to contraception."

Ron spread out his arms, indicating all of the many gingers in the garden. "Why would anyone have to tell you that? It's bleeding obvious, isn't it?"

Ginny had been managing to keep her Weasley self from getting pregnant quite nicely, but Harry decided not to mention it at that moment. They had, however, started to fantasize about babies in their own future - or at least, what they might name them. The first boy would be called after Harry's father, the first girl after his mother. That was easy enough.

If there were any more, they'd name them after Professor Dumbledore, who had died of the lingering effects of a curse one year into a horcrux hunt that would go on for nearly three years. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore - Harry and Ginny's child would already have a living Uncle Percy so Percival was out. Severus Snape and his wife, the former Madam Malfoy, were both so detached from Muggle life they hadn't known Brian was a normal Muggle name and had gone and given it to their son, Hermione's baby step-brother-in-law. It left Harry and Ginny with a choice between Albus and Wulfric for their own, completely hypothetical third child.

"Get me some strawberries, would you love?" Pansy was saying.

There were no strawberries anywhere in sight but Ron rose to his feet to find some anyway. He paused, not looking peeved about serving Pansy but sorry to be leaving her for a few moments. He rubbed her belly, then had to kiss it. She raked her fingers through his hair as he bent whispering something to it, and then he kissed her face before setting off.

* * *

Tim Granger had grown to love Draco Malfoy in the four years since he'd joined the family, but he still watched the dreamy red-head doting on his wife a little wistfully. Since Hermione's pregnancy was not yet widely known, Tim had yet to see how fatherhood would change Draco. But it would change him. Tim knew that.

Ah, there was Remus Lupin with his own little one, trying to get him to leave his cap on so the Muggles wouldn't notice if his hair changed colours. And there was the man Tim once knew as Hermione's nasty chemistry teacher, now Draco's step-father, carrying on his shoulder a pale, dark-haired toddler, the sweetest little vampire look-alike Tim had ever seen, the little boy destined to become an uncle before his third birthday.

These wizards - they did everything too young and took their disagreements far too seriously, but they were alright, all of them working to be normal in front of the rest of the family this morning.

And the rest of the family was what Tim was attending to now, greeting them as they arrived and found their seats - the aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, friends. They weren't magical or necessarily heroic, but they were not nothing, not superfluous nobodies to be swept away so the wizards could have their story. They deserved to remain a part of Hermione's life and that was why, instead of sending out word that a wedding had already happened, maybe on a beach, Tim and Ann had planned this service to honour and include the rest of the family.

The music struck up. The bride was coming.

* * *

After four years as her husband, it should have been difficult for Draco to look nervous or elated or affected by much at all as he stood at the head of the aisle in the rented garden set up like a wedding chapel. He was a ham when he tried to act - just ask Potter. It meant his quiet, sincere look of awe, as he stood beside the vicar from Hermione's grandmother's parish, watching his bride approach for the second time, must have been genuine. This wedding would have no lightning, no spells or blue fires, but it would have the most important elements: each of them.

Their mothers made their entrance first, arm in arm, parting to sit at the front on opposite sides of the aisle. Tim and Hermione came next. Narcissa had enchanted the wedding dress at the last minute, and the plain white A-line strapless was overlaid with a delicate lacy film that covered the skirt and bodice, then draped over her arms in high, fine sleeves. It had a fairy-like look - light, springtime magic they could share with anyone.

Hermione came to Draco on her father's arm - Draco's wife, always, and now bringing along with her his child. In wizarding Britain, parents tended to be young, especially in a generation like theirs. There had been times when Draco and Hermione, Ron and Pansy, Harry and Ginny, and the rest of them questioned whether they'd have a future at all. So they chased after the future they had won, fast.

* * *

The best part of the Malfoys' second wedding was their second honeymoon, because it was actually their first one. After finishing their second wedding, they didn't go to potions class, didn't worry about urinary tract infections, but went to the hotel suite Hermione's Uncle Randall booked for them as a wedding gift. It wasn't as posh as the purged and repaired Malfoy Manor, but it was different from their routine, and their aim was to take a break from their rigorous advanced studies - as much as they could when Hermione insisted on packing two Arithmancy texts for herself and a compendium of potions for Draco. They had a plan to found their own magical research institute someday, independent of the politics of the Ministry. It was ambitious and would take all their academic efforts.

But on this day, they rested.

"Let's pretend London is another country," she said to him as they lay in their hotel bed. "Let's do something here we've never done before."

Draco raised his eyebrows and rolled on top of her. "I like the sound of that."

"I mean, let's do something like go to the ballet," she laughed at him. "Once the baby comes, it will be harder to find a chance."

He groaned into her silky smooth shoulder. "The Royal Ballet? If it's not French or Russian ballet, I can hardly be bothered."

She scoffed, shifting herself until she was on top of him. "Well, I happen to like British dancers. Tall, thin, pale ones who glide and pirouette."

He laced his fingers in the small of her back. "All the more reason to keep you away from the Royal Ballet and its dancers and here with me."

"I am talking about you," she said. "You are my favourite dancer, in Britain, France, or Russia." She leaned forward and kissed his grinning mouth.

He was still smiling broadly, dragging his fingertips up and down her spine as he asked, "Really? When was the last time I danced for you?"

She laid her head on his chest. "At our Muggle-wedding, just now. You waltzed like an angel in front of all my relatives and made them love you."

He smoothed her hair as it covered them. "Wedding waltzing? Too easy. Doesn't count."

"Alright then," she turned onto her back. "Dance for me now. Get up and do a pirouette for me."

He scoffed. "Now? No, Granger. I'm not dressed."

She sat up, winding the sheet around herself, leaving him uncovered, giving instructions. "Your pajamas bottoms are there, and I happen to know you're already limbered up. Go on then."

Not at all nonplussed about being exposed, he propped himself on his elbows. "Hermione - "

She gathered the sheets more tightly, smirking, demanding. "Either you give me a pirouette here in our room, or we spend a night at the opera watching for someone else to do one there."

He sat up, muttering, pulling on his pajamas. He scuffed across the floor. "My feet are going to stick."

She summoned a fresh pair of socks and tossed it at him. "Dance like you did in our fourth year, at our lessons, the first time you ever did something I thought wonderful."

He stood on one leg as he put each sock on, so beautifully balanced it was almost enough for her. When he was ready, his foot slid out to second position, his arms extended, and as he always did before he pushed off, he checked to see if she was watching him with complete and utter adoration.

She was.

**AN: Thanks again for reading. If the last section doesn't make sense, it's a call back to the prequel to this story, "Dancing with Draco." It's posted here too.**


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